Grinding wheel and grinding method

A grinding method of grinding a substrate by using a grinding apparatus including a chuck table for holding said substrate, grinding means having a rotating spindle and a grinding wheel fixed to said rotating spindle for grinding said substrate held on said chuck table, abrasive feeding means for relatively moving said grinding means and said chuck table toward and away from each other in an abrasive feeding direction, and moving means for relatively moving said grinding means and said chuck table in a radial direction of said chuck table;

• said grinding wheel including:
• a wheel base having a free end portion and a fixed portion fixed to said rotating spindle;
• the free end portion of the wheel base has a surface that extends in a plane substantially perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the spindle;
• and a plurality of abrasive members fixed to the surface of said free end portion of said wheel base;
• said wheel base having a plurality of grinding water supply holes for supplying a grinding water to said abrasive members;
• each abrasive member being formed as a segment abrasive obtained by binding diamond abrasive grains with a metal bond;
• the shape of each abrasive member being set so that each abrasive member has an outer surface extending downward from the surface of said free end portion of said wheel base so as to be inclined radially outward of said wheel base and each abrasive member has a bottom surface extending substantially parallel to the surface of the free end portion;
• said plurality of abrasive members being arranged annularly at given intervals;
• said plurality of grinding water supply holes being formed on said free end portion of said wheel base in the vicinity of said abrasive members so as to each correspond to said abrasive members in the condition where each grinding water supply hole lies on a line connecting the corresponding abrasive member and the axis of rotation of said wheel base;
• the grinding method comprising grinding said substrate held on said chuck table by creep feed grinding such that said grinding wheel being rotated is horizontally moved relative to said substrate.