E-PVD Vacuum chamber cleaning maintenance and Care

[lamejane]

Hello PVD experts out there !

I have question on general e-PVD Vacuum chamber cleaning maintenance and Care

as shown in the pictures below, Thin film material (mostly Metals) is being deposited on a daily basis onto the hardware parts present in our e-PVD vacuum chamber ( such as the quartz crystal shutter, crystal container, Crucible revolver etc.)

We use a clean room grade vacuum cleaner to clean out the delaminated film from the chamber walls after each deposition process but not all the metal is removed since they adhere quite strongly onto the copper and stainless steel surfaces.

Question to the experts here:

What procedures are normally used to clean the thin-film Metal coating on the hardware parts? Is there a special scotch brite like scrubber (clean room grade) for such purposes?. Would a High power Laser cleaning such as in the link below help?

https://www.cleanlaser.de/wEnglish/produkte/high-power-cl-1000.php

Covering the hardware parts with Al foil is not an option because of possible Al contamination on the wafers being deposited.

Looking forward to your expertise : ).
Thank you .

 

[berkeman]

What does the manufacturer's documentation say about periodic maintenance and cleaning? That must be in their user documentation for that equipment, no?

 

[lamejane]

Not really, they don't really suggest what to use in order to clean but only give a time period of when to perform a cleaning and maintainence

 

[berkeman]

Not really, they don't really suggest what to use in order to clean but only give a time period of when to perform a cleaning and maintainence

Hmm, maybe they don't give guidance because they don't control what materials you deposit on the target in the chambers. Maybe try contacting the supplier of the metals that you are depositing. They may have experience and suggestions on the best ways to clean up the interior of the chamber after depositing their metals.