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UV Ozone Cleaner

All Processing Equipment, Solar Cell Prototyping Platform


Product Code L2002A3-UK
Price $3,125 ex. VAT

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Ultraclean surfaces within minutes

Produce near-atomically clean surfaces without causing damage to the sample


Within minutes, the Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner is capable of removing contamination from the surface of substrates and samples, providing ultraclean surfaces. Using a high-power UV light source to generate ozone and break down organic surface contaminants, the procedure can produce near-atomically clean surfaces without causing any damage to your sample. Volatile compounds created from surface contaminants will quickly evaporate, leaving the sample ready for the next part of your experiment.

The Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner is an extremely versatile piece of equipment. It is able to treat a wide range of materials for a number of different applications and will soon be an essential part of your lab. All orders of our UV Ozone Cleaner are eligible for free worldwide shipping and our two year warranty is included as standard.

How does UV ozone cleaning work?


UV ozone cleaning relies upon the use of a high-intensity UV light source, which illuminates the surface to be cleaned with two specific wavelengths of light. Low pressure mercury vapour discharge lamps are typically used, like the synthetic quartz UV grid lamp in the Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner, which have two dominant emission peaks at 184 nm and 254 nm. Upon irradiation, molecular oxygen present in the air is dissociated by radiation below 200 nm in length. This results in the formation of two radicals of oxygen. These radicals go on to react with further molecular oxygen forming molecules of ozone.

At the same time, light at 254 nm is used to excite organic species present on the surface of the sample. This process increases the reactivity of the contaminants with ozone. Upon reacting, the material is cleaned from the surface.

Key Features

UV Ozone Mercury Vapour Discharge Lamp

High intensity UV lamp

The UV Ozone Cleaner houses a series of high intensity, low pressure synthetic quartz mercury vapour discharge lamps. By utilizing the emission at 185 nm and 254 nm, ozone is generated. The presence of ozone and UV light allows for the removal of organic material. The high intensity output gives results quickly and facilitates a large cleaning area.

UV Ozone Cleaner Illumination Area

Large cleaning area

Despite the small footprint of the unit itself (210 mm x 228 mm x 310 mm), the Ossila UV Cleaner has a large illumination area. The tray can accommodate wafers with up to 153 mm diameter (6 inch), which allows for the cleaning of a wide array of samples, including:

Check MarkMicroscope slides
Check Mark6-Inch wafer
Check MarkAFM tips
Check MarkDiced substrates
Check MarkPetri dishes
Check MarkAnd more

The maximum recommended substrate thickness is 12 mm.

Simple To Use UV Ozone Cleaner

Simple to use interface

The bright LCD display and tactile keypad provide a simple interface. With the easy to use built-in software, it only takes a short time to start cleaning your samples.

Using the buttons on the front of the unit, it is easy to control the cleaning time. The built-in software continuously monitors the temperature inside the system; the panel can show temperature readings for the tray, UV lamp, and electronics. This makes it easy to make sure that delicate samples do not overheat.

Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner designed for safety

Designed with added safety

The Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner has been designed and built with safety in mind, backed up by the Ossila Guarantee and our free two year warranty.

The unit adheres to BS EN 61010-1:2010 standards alongside EMC, Low Voltage, and RoHS CE directives. Smart safety features include an integrated safety interlock that prevents the lamp from being powered on while the tray is open. The system also includes a software alert, which is triggered if the temperature detected by any of the internal sensors is too high.

UV Ozone Cleaning Area
The Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner has a large cleaning area and can be used to treat a number of samples at a time
Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner fascia
The Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner control panel is intuitive and easy to use

UV Ozone Cleaner Applications

UV ozone cleaning is a versatile technique which can be applied to a large array of materials to provide surface cleaning and treatment. It can also be used for a variety of other applications which require either the presence of ozone or UV light, meaning that the method sees a wide range of uses across multiple disciplines. The two main applications for the technique are for surface cleaning and surface treatment.

Surface cleaning

Surface cleaning using UV ozone cleaning is typically done as the final step in a cleaning procedure to remove residual organics that are present on the surface of a sample. The process results in an atomically clean surface, free from any organic contaminants. Contaminants that can be cleaned with UV ozone cleaning include photoresists, human skin oils, plastic surface / silicon oil residues, resins, cleaning solvent residues, and solder flux.

Surface treatment

During the cleaning process, the formation of ozone and oxygen radicals can result in a reaction with water molecules present in the air. This results in the formation of hydroxide radicals. These short lived, highly reactive species can react with bonds on the surface of substrates, resulting in the formation of high energy hydroxide groups. This can help with preparation of samples by increasing the surface energy of a substrate.

Other applications of UV ozone cleaning include UV curing, UV chemical reactions, the removal of surface monolayers, oxidation of surfaces, and micropatterning. Common materials that can be treated using UV ozone cleaning include:

  • Quartz / glass
  • Silicon / silicon oxides
  • Metals
  • Metal oxides
  • III-V semiconductors
  • Slides and substrates
  • AFM/STM probes
  • Optical components
  • Petri dishes
Please contact us if you are unsure if your material or application is suitable for use with UV ozone cleaning.

UV Ozone Theory

Removal of Surface Monolayers

High energy substrate surface before UV Ozone cleaning Low energy substrate surface after UV Ozone cleaning
Water drop on OTS-treated silicon substrate (300 nm SiO2 on surface) before UV ozone cleaning and after 10 minutes UV ozone cleaning

In this application, we used the Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner to remove a surface layer of n-octadecyl trichlorosilane (OTS) to improve the wetting of water-based solutions on a silicon substrate.

OTS is an organic molecule that is used in the fabrication of organic field effect transistors to improve the electrical properties of deposited films. It consists of a trichlorosilane group, which reacts with the native oxide of silicon to form three siloxane bonds with the surface. These bonds repeat across the surface of the silicon substrate until the entire surface is covered in a monolayer of OTS.

The long hydrocarbon chains result in the substrate having a very low surface energy. Wetting of high surface energy solvents, such as water, therefore becomes impossible, and the contact angle of deposited droplets is high. The OTS-treated substrate was exposed to UV ozone for approximately 10 minutes to clean the surface of the octadecane carbon chains. The treatment increased the surface energy enough to allow complete wetting of the water droplet on the substrates surface.

Spin Coater

  • Accurate Film Deposition
  • Range of Speeds
  • Programmable

Available From £2100


Treating Plastic Surfaces

Surface Treatment of PMMA Substrates Via UV Ozone Cleaning
Contact angle measurements of water taken on PMMA substrates after varying lengths of UV Ozone exposure time.

Surface treatment can be used to improve the surface energy of a substrate. The treatment time (length of exposure to ozone) can vary the degree of change in surface energy.

For example, plastic substrates have very low surface energy due to the abundance of C-H bonds and other similar low energy bonds. As a result, due to the poor wetting that occurs, coating thin films from solutions that have high surface tension solvents can be difficult.

One method to assess the degree of wetting is to look at the contact angle that a droplet makes on the surface of the substrate. The lower the contact angle (measurable with an Ossila Contact Angle Goniometer) that a particular solvent makes, the better the wetting is. UV ozone cleaning can be used to treat the surface to improve the wetting of solvents.

During the process of UV ozone treatment, ozone reacts with surface bonds, breaking down the organic groups and eventually releasing volatile species. During the process, intermediate steps occur in which low-energy bonds such as the C-H bond are replaced with higher energy groups such as C-OH.

Contact Angle Goniometer

  • High-Resolution Video
  • Accurate Measurement
  • Simple to Use

Available From £2000

How Does UV Ozone Clean Samples?

UV ozone cleaning is a photo-sensitized oxidation process in which organic molecules in their excited state chemically react with ozone molecules, resulting in the cleaving of bonds and the dissociation of molecules from the surface. The process utilizes a high intensity UV light source which has two dominant emission peaks at 185 nm and 254 nm. These two wavelengths are responsible for different processes, which ultimately result in the cleaning of the surface.

Radiation below 200 nm is strongly absorbed by molecular oxygen. The energy of the absorbed photon is enough to break the oxygen-oxygen double bond, resulting in the formation of two free radicals of oxygen (O•). These free radicals can subsequently react with molecular oxygen producing ozone molecules (O3).

UV radiation at 254 nm is readily absorbed by organic species that are present on the surface of many substrates. The exciton that is formed will be in a highly energetic state, and the energy may also be high enough for certain molecules to make organic radicals.

The excited states and organic radical species present on the surface readily react with ozone present within the atmosphere, resulting in the formation of volatile species such as carbon dioxide, water, molecular nitrogen, and short chain organic compounds. These volatile compounds can easily desorb from the surface under atmospheric conditions, leaving a pristine surface.

How UV Ozone Alter Surface Energy

UV Ozone treatment alters the surface energy of samples via two methods. The first of these is through the removal of low energy contaminants from the surface. These are typically organic atmospheric contaminants that have adsorbed onto the surface of a substrate. The second way is through treatment of the surface and the formation of high energy bonds on the surface of the samples.

The removal of contaminants is done via the photo-oxidation process. This process results in the desorption of contaminants from the surface due to the chemical break down of the organic material. The underlying substrate is typically a higher energy surface, such as a ceramic or a metal, which results in the surface energy of the sample increasing in comparison to when it was untreated. This treatment does not last forever as over time organic contaminants will begin to reabsorb back onto the surface, slowly decreasing the surface energy.

The second way that UV ozone treatment works to improve the surface energy is via the formation of hydroxyl functional groups on the surface of the substrate. During the irradiation process, light at 253.7 nm can break down water molecules, resulting in the formation of OH and O free radicals. Hydroxyl free radicals will typically react with ozone present to form water and oxygen, however, when the UV degradation of water occurs near the surface of the sample, the hydroxyl free radical can react with the surface, forming a functional group. This functional group has a high bonding energy, resulting in an increase in the surface energy of most surfaces.

For more information on the theory of surface energy and how to calculate surface energies please visit our surface energy guide page.


Resources and Support

General Specification

High Intensity UV Light

High Intensity UV

15 mW·cm-2 at 185 nm

Deep UV Emission

Deep UV Emission

185 nm & 254 nm LED

Lamp Lifetime

Long Lamp Lifetimes

>2000 Hours

Illumination Area

Large Cleaning Area

153 mm (6 Inch) Diameter

UV Ozone Lamp Cooling

Active Lamp Cooling

Maintains Optimal Temperature

Safety Interlock

User Safety

Tray Interlock

Thermal Cutoff

Overheating Protection

Thermal Lamp Cutoff

Atomic Cleanliness

Atomic Cleanliness

Removal of All Organics


Technical Specifications

UV Light Specifications

Lamp Specifications

Lamp Type Low Pressure Mercury Discharge Lamp
Lamp Dimensions 150 mm x 15 mm (Length x Diameter)
Number of Lamps 4
Discharge Peaks 185 nm and 254 nm
Lamp Lifetime T80 Lifetime 2000 Hours

Sample Irradiance Specification

Sample UV Intensity 15 mW·cm-2 at 185 nm
Cleaning Area 153 mm Diameter (6-Inch)
Exposure Time 1 second to 60 minute; digitally controlled
Dimensions and Weight

UV Ozone Cleaner External Dimensions

UV Ozone Cleaner Dimensions
External Product Dimensions - 210 mm x 310 mm x 228 mm (W x D x H)

UV Ozone Cleaner Internal Dimensions & Weight

Tray Illumination Area 153 mm (6-Inch) Diameter Circle
Maximum Sample Height 12 mm
Weight 5.45 kg
Materials and Finish

Case

Material 1.5 mm Mild Steel
Finish Textured Black Powder Coating

Drawer Tray

Material 1.5 mm Stainless Steel
Finish #4 Brushed Finish
User Interface

Display

Type 24 bit Colour TFT LCD Display
Resolution 480 x 272 px
Size 4.3"

Interface

Description Tactile Buttons
Safety Features

Equipment Safety Features

Drawer Interlock Hardware Interlock Sensor
Temperature Regulation Active Lamp Cooling - 53 CFM Axial Fan
Thermal Cutoff Onboard Temperature Sensors for Software Cutoff
Power Supply

Input

Type IEC C13 Power Cable
Voltage Range 110 V - 240 V
Fuse 1 A
Certification and Standards

Conformité Européenne (CE) Mark

Low Voltage Directive (2014/35/EU)
Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) (2014/30/EU)
Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) (2011/65/EU + 2015/863)

British Standards Institution (BSI)

BS EN 61010-1:2010 Safety requirements for electrical equipment for measurement, control, and laboratory use. General requirements.

Documentation

UV Lamp SpectrumUV Lamp Spectrum (graph of relative intensity of emission spectrum)

UV Lamp LifetimeUV Lamp Lifetime (graph of relative intensity over operational time in hours)

Declaration of ConformanceDeclaration of Conformance (Low Voltage Directive, EMC Directive, RoHS Directive, and BS EN 61010-1:2010)

Please note that the Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner does NOT have an integrated ozone filtration system, and must therefore be operated in a working fume hood.
UV Ozone Cleaner Stock
The Ossila UV Ozone Cleaner: Order Now!

To the best of our knowledge the information provided here is accurate. However, Ossila assume no liability for the accuracy of this page. The values provided are typical at the time of manufacture and may vary over time and from batch to batch. Products may have minor cosmetic differences (e.g. to the branding) compared to the photos on our website. All products are for laboratory and research and development use only, and may not be used for any other purpose including health care, military, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food, or commercial applications.

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