Mechanical grinding, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) and dry etching process are integrated to remove sapphire substrate for fabricating thin-film light-emitting diodes. The thinning of sapphire substrate is done by fast mechanical grinding followed by CMP. The CMP can remove or reduce most of the scratches produced by mechanical grinding, recovering both the mechanical strength and wafer warpage to their original status and resulting in a smoother surface. The surface morphology and surface roughness on grinded and polished sapphire substrate are measured by using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The etch rates of sapphire by BCl3-based dry etching are reported. Pattern transfer to the physical and chemical stability of sapphire is made possible by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etch system that generates high density plasma. The patterning of several microns period in sapphire wafer by using a combination of BCl3/Ar plasma chemistry and SiO2 mask is presented. The anisotropic etch profile formed on sapphire wafer is obtained from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.