Small, smart and powerful downstream plasma cleaners
EM-KLEEN remote plasma source and controller
EM-KLEEN in-situ remote plasma cleaner can be used for in-situ cleaning of samples and vacuum chambers for electron microscopes and other types of analytical instruments, such SEM, FIB, TEM, XPS, and SIMS. It can effectively remove hydrocarbon and fluorocarbon contaminations inside the high vacuum or ultra-high vacuum chamber, improve the ultimate vacuum level and reduce the pump-down time. It can also remove organic contaminations on the surface of the sample before surface imaging and analysis. The system consists of a resistive LCD touchscreen controller with an embedded microcomputer and a remote plasma source. A remote plasma source should be installed on the vacuum chamber to be cleaned. The standard vacuum interface port is NW/KF40 flange. Adapters for different SEM ports are available. CF2.75″ flange option is also available.
EM-KLEEN is a fully automatic plasma source. The design is intuitive and versatile. Despite its small size, EM-KLEEN remote plasma source has integrated a Pirani pressure sensor, an electronically variable gas flow controller, a plasma intensity sensor, a temperature sensor, and a cooling fan. The flow controller automatically adjusts the gas flow rate to maintain recipe-specified pressure inside the plasma cleaner chamber. The controller can store up to 60 recipes with different rf power, plasma tube pressure, gas flow rate, and cleaning duration. No manual adjustment required for different recipes. The miniature pressure sensor constantly monitors the sample chamber pressure. It can be used as a safety interlock trigger in the safe operation mode and to count sample loading events for the SmartSchedule™ feature. A cooling fan enables high-power high-speed cleaning without causing the source to overheat. The temperature sensor provides another interlock protection against source overheats during prolonged cleaning at high power. The plasma strength sensor measures the plasma strength in real-time, users are not blind to plasma status anymore.
With pressure sensor, automatic gas flow controller, plasma sensor, temperature sensor, and LCD touchscreen controller with embedded microprocessor working in tandem, EM-KLEEN in-situ plasma cleaner can take care of your system automatically and provide protection against potential user mistakes. SmartClean™ technology developed by PIE Scientific combines the state-of-the-art plasma source design technology developed in nuclear research and in the semiconductor industry. EM-KLEEN plasma cleaners are far more advanced than previous generations of remote plasma cleaners. Additionally, many unique features are only available on our product.
10 minute long scan before and after SEM chamber cleaning
Remove carbon mark created in the previous scan with 2-minute plasma cleaning. No more dark scan marks on this sample after 6-minute plasma cleaning. Cleaning speed is 3~5X faster than competitors using the same sample on the same SEM system.
Feature list:
- Low-pressure high-efficiency plasma discharge technology originated from the research work carried out in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Instant plasma ignition at extremely low pressure. Users don’t need to worry about whether plasma ignites or not. No need to manually adjusting the knobs to ignite the plasma on EM-KLEEN.
- Electronically variable gas flow control with pressure sensor feedback control. Users can directly specify different source operating pressure. Plasma cleaner will maintain the set pressure by automatically adjusting gas flow through a servo feedback control loop provided by the pressure sensor.
- The plasma probe monitors the plasma intensity to guide users to set up the optimal recipes. Optimal gas flow can vary with different system pumping speeds and chamber sizes. Our plasma cleaner gives users the freedom to change gas flow electronically and optimize the source pressure based on the feedback from the plasma intensity sensor.
- 0-75Watt rf power at 13.56MHz. RF power can be adjusted at 1-watt interval.
- Microcomputer with a touchscreen user interface.
- Intuitive remote PC control user interface through RS232/RS485 protocol.
- Intelligent “Safe operation mode” and “Expert operation mode” with a user-customizable warning message. A very useful feature if the electron or ion microscope is shared by many inexperienced users.
- Customizable SmartScheule function on the microcomputer can take care of your system autonomously.
- Support 60 customizable recipes with different rf power wattage, plasma tube pressure, gas flow rate, and cleaning duration.
- Active fan cooling for high-power high-speed cleaning.
- Overtemperature interlock protection.
- Easy to carry controller. The system can be easily moved between different systems.