well as other diamond related materials coatings free standing substrates as well as super hard materials and combinations thereof these examples are provided merely to illustrate the invention and are not meant to limit the scope of the claim a nd yag laser continuum powerlite 3000 at 532 nm wavelength is used to trim the substrate surface and to create a structurally damaged microstructure by using the second harmonic of the nd yag laser infrared beam induced excess surface heating is avoided and laser induced material evaporation for coarse material removal and macro flattening is achieved apart from the material removal a second intention is to create a chemically degraded structural damage induced layer to allow aggressive surface absorption for the following radiation treatment an arf excimer laser lambda physicks lpx300 at 193 nm wavelength is used to remove the nd yag laser generated damaged layer and micro flatten the surface all example runs were carried out in air at atmospheric pressure to further reduce the complexity of the setup and the cost of polishing 700 u03bcm to 1000 u03bcm thick free standing cvd diamond substrates with an average surface roughness of 20 u03bcm to 30 u03bcm and an average grain size of 150 200 um were used schematics of the experimental set up for laser polishing are presented in fig1 a and 3 b a frequency doubled nd yag laser operating at 532 nm and a 15 ns pulse width was used at five different energy densities ranging from 3 2 j cm 2 to 800 j cm 2 to investigate the effect of energy densities on average surface roughness all the samples were treated using the nd yag laser followed by an arf excimer laser operating at 193 nm and.