In the light-emitting diode (LED) market, the market share for hard-brittle materials has increased. However, using the wafering process, the hard-brittle materials for LEDs are difficult to fabricate mechanically due to their hard-brittle characteristics. In addition, the hard-brittle materials are chemically stable. We propose a sequential process of electrolytic in-process dressing (ELID) grinding and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) for hard-brittle materials used in LEDs, with applications to silicon carbide (SiC), sapphire and gallium nitride (GaN). The advantage of the ELID grinding-CMP process is to dramatically reduce process time and achieve high surface quality by adopting ELID grinding instead of general mechanical polishing, which has a low material removal rate and takes considerable process time. Finally, the surface of each material is smoothed using the CMP process with a mixed abrasive slurry (MAS) and a colloidal silica slurry. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.