UV OZONE CLEANERS (UVO Cleaners)

The UV Ozone cleaning or UVO cleaning procedure is an effective method of removing contaminants from surfaces. It is a simple-to-use and inexpensive dry process that can rapidly produce clean surfaces, both in air or in a vacuum system, at ambient temperatures. It is also effective for pre-cleaning and post-cleaning (final cleaning) in wet processes.

UV Ozone cleaning is a photo-sensitized oxidation process in which the contaminant molecules of photo resists, resins, human skin oils, cleaning solvent residues, silicone oils, and flux are excited and/or dissociated by the absorption of short-wavelength UV radiation. Atomic oxygen is simultaneously generated when molecular oxygen is dissociated by 184.9 nm and ozone by 253.7 nm UV. The 253.7 nm UV radiation is absorbed by most hydrocarbons and also by ozone. The products of this excitation of contaminant molecules react with atomic oxygen to form simpler, volatile molecules which desorbs from the surface. Hence, when both UV wavelengths are present atomic oxygen is continuously generated, and ozone is continually formed and destroyed. By placing pre-cleaned samples within five millimeters of ozone producing UV source, such as a mercury vapor grid lamp, near-atomically clean surfaces can be achieved in less than one minute.

RotaLab's UV Ozone cleaners are widely used in industry and research to UV clean semiconductor wafers, silicon, gallium arsenide, ITO, quartz, mica, sapphire, ceramics, glass, gold and platinum surfaces, LCD and LED displays, AFM probes and tips, and SEM and TEM samples. Our products are also used to remove and strip photoresist, improve surface wettability, UV polymer activation, assembly and bonding of PDMS / glass microfluidic devices, and in many other applications.