TABLE OF CONTENTS Michael L. Free
Department of Metallurgical Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Many of the items we use daily must be manufactured in environments that require particulate materials, yet the particles that are essential to production must be removed to extremely low levels following the relevant manufacturing processes. A single particle remaining at a critical place on a semiconductor circuit during the manufacturing process can cause circuit failure in a finished integrated circuit. Consequently, particle removal technologies are vital to electronic circuit manufacturing [1 18]. Other industries such as optical component manufacturing also rely upon particle removal technologies to create quality components with appropriate finishes.
In many industries, particles are handled in aqueous media, and particle removal from surfaces is also performed in aqueous media. Removal techniques vary from simple brush scrubbing techniques [19 22] and megasonic vibration [23 26] for wet surfaces to laser treatment [27 30] and snow [31 32] or air [33] cleaning for dry surfaces.
Particles adhere to surfaces due to natural attractive forces between particles and surfaces.
