A Compact, Fast, and Efficient Plasma Cleaner

We demonstrate the working of a compact, fast, and efficient plasma cleaner that utilizes the intense plasma generated in a radio frequency (RF) plasma reactor with metal electrodes. Our plasma cleaner’s effectiveness in cleaning substrates with different contaminants was studied and compared with a commercial plasma cleaner (HARRICK plasma PDC-32G-2) using optical imaging, water drop test and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). We used substrates contaminated with fingerprints, photoresist, and pump oil to study the cleaning performance of our plasma cleaner. Excellent substrate cleaning could be achieved in less than 2 min, which shows that the cleaning time is reduced by about 80% compared with the commercial plasma cleaner. The results also indicate that the cleaning performance is comparable or better than the commercial plasma cleaner, without even precleaning the substrates.