Single-crystal silicon carbide (4H-SiC) has a range of useful physical, mechanical and electronic properties that make it a promising material for fabrication of next-generation semiconductor devices. In this work, we report a hybrid polishing process combining thermal oxidation pretreatment and soft abrasive polishing to realize the damage-free and atomic-scale smooth finishing of the carbon face of 4H-SiC. By thermal oxidation pretreatment, the hardness of the carbon face has been reduced from 4.6 GPa to 1.7 GPa, which enables highly efficient polishing using CeO2 slurry. For conventional CeO2 slurry polishing without pretreatment, scratches still existed after a long polishing duration for 16 h. The probable scratch removal mechanism in CeO2 slurry polishing has been proposed based on surface morphology changes during polishing. Whereas a scratch-free surface with well-ordered SiC atomic steps was obtained within a short polishing duration of only 3 h when polishing was conducted on a thermally oxidized surface. Our results demonstrate that hybrid polishing combining surface pretreatment and soft abrasive polishing is a promising approach to realize the damage-free and atomic-scale smooth finishing of the carbon face of 4H-SiC. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.