Advances in cleaning metal and glass surfaces to micron level cleanliness
A high pressure 6.9 MPa solvent spraying technique has been developed to remove small (greater than 5 ..mu..m) contaminant particles from large (100 m/sup 2/) surface areas. Chemically polished and etched 304 stainless steel components are solvent sprayed to achieve cleanliness levels of less than 10 particle/cm/sup 2/ greater than 5 ..mu..m diameter. The high pressure and high liquid velocity cleaning technique is able to remove 99.9 percent of greater than 5 ..mu..m diameter particles in 5 to 10 seconds. This compares with ultrasonic cleaning which removes only 20 to 60 percent of greater than 5 ..mu..m particles in 2 to 10 minutes. High levels of particulate cleanliness are required for large solid-state systems where contaminants can migrate to optical surfaces and cause severe pitting. The pitted glass must be removed and repolished to maintain acceptable beam quality. Special Class 100 clean room procedures and equipment have been developed to verify the cleanliness of the cleaned components and to ensure their remaining clean during installation and operation. Development of these cleaning procedures has resulted in greatly increased time between failures of solid-state disk laser amplifiers. Although developed specifically for cleaning optical components, the basic technique should find wide application in any field requiring precision cleaned surfaces.
- Research Organization:
- California Univ., Livermore (USA). Lawrence Livermore Lab.
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 5270178
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-79702; CONF-771110-2
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Advances in cleaning metal and glass surfaces to micron-level cleanliness
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Related Subjects
360101* -- Metals & Alloys-- Preparation & Fabrication
42 ENGINEERING
420300 -- Engineering-- Lasers-- (-1989)
ALLOYS
CHROMIUM ALLOYS
CHROMIUM STEELS
CHROMIUM-NICKEL STEELS
CLEANING
CORROSION RESISTANT ALLOYS
HEAT RESISTING ALLOYS
IRON ALLOYS
IRON BASE ALLOYS
LASER CAVITIES
NICKEL ALLOYS
SOLVENTS
SPRAYS
STAINLESS STEEL-304
STAINLESS STEELS
STEELS
SURFACE CLEANING
SURFACE FINISHING