Desktop plasma cleaner for surface activation and cleaning
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Tergeo and Tergeo-plus tabletop plasma cleaner
Plasma activation
Plasma surface activation is a process to create active functional groups such as broken bonds on the surface to improve surface wettability and bondability. It can be achieved through a physical ion sputtering process or a chemical oxidation process. Typically argon irons or ions from other inert and heavy gases can be used for the sputtering process. Oxygen plasma or water vapor plasma can be used to oxidize polymer surfaces and open up new dangling bonds. If necessary, plasma treatment with CF4 plasma can deposit inert fluorinated polymers and render the surface hydrophobic.
Plasma cleaning and etching
Plasma etching is a process to generate chemically reactive radicals with plasma to selectively etch away some surface layers on the sample. Tergeo plasma cleaner has integrated a powerful 13.56MHz rf power supply to generate high-density plasma for applications like photoresist ashing, wafer descum, PCB desmear and device decapsulation of polymer packaging layer, etc. If the samples are immersed in the plasma, the reactive ion etching/sputtering process also takes place beside the chemical reaction with radicals. Besides the traditional immersion mode plasma cleaning and etching, Tergeo plasma cleaner also integrates a remote plasma source attached to the side of the sample chamber. The remote plasma source generates plasma outside the sample chamber. Therefore, samples are not attacked by energetic ions. Only reactive radicals diffused into the sample chamber can perform chemical reactions with the sample surface layers. Remote plasma cleaning/etching is a gentle process that can be used to remove organic contamination from optics with antireflective layer, SEM samples, nanotube, graphene, DLC (diamond-like carbon), carbon fiber, or TEM samples on holey carbon grid without causing irreversible sample damage.