How Plasma Cleaning Ensures Superior Adhesion Across Industries
Plasma Cleaning
Microscopic contaminations not visible to the naked eye are found on all surfaces. Almost always, these contaminants must be removed as a first step to producing faultless adhesion between surfaces when working in the application of glueing, printing, painting, bonding, or coating.
Plasma Cleaning Functional Principles
Plasma cleaning technology offers solutions for any type of contamination, for any substrate. In the cleaning process, molecular level contamination residues are removed from a surface by a dry method of turning the foreign materials into a gas. This process of changing the state of a solid or smearable liquid into a gas without exposing the part to a liquid is preferred over standard cleaning methods.
With a plasma cleaner there are virtually no limitations for materials that can be treated. Polymers (solid or fibers), metals, rubbers, ceramics and glass are equally suitable for plasma cleaning. It is safer, environmentally friendly, and more effective than traditional wet chemical cleaning procedures. Plasma cleaning also works at atmospheric or low pressure, depending on your process. This means that plasma cleaning systems can easily be integrated into existing processing lines.
PlasmaPen™ Atmospheric Plasma System from PVA Tepla
The PlasmaPen™ is a patented atmospheric plasma pen cleaner system for various surface preparation requirements such as surface clean and surface activation. The PlasmaPen™ is a self-contained unit that operates at atmospheric pressure. Its patented design keeps high voltages and current safely inside of the pen body, away from the plasma jet and substrate surfaces. Surface cleaning and activation with the PlasmaPen™ ensures a reliable wire and die bonding in semiconductor packaging. It has found particular success in adhesion
promotion of anisotropic conductive film (ACF) used in flat panel display, electronics packaging, solar devices, medical device products, and windows/glass manufacturing.
For example, LCD or OLED terminal cleaning to remove organic contaminants from the bond fingers prior to connective bonding and conductive film adherence. Also glass activation by plasma prior to chip mounting (COG) is another important application. Because of the need for localized treatment these processes are best performed with PVA TePla’s atmospheric Plasma Pen. Due to the small size of the Plasma Pen nozzle, and the fact that it is attached to an umbilical, it can readily be integrated into a manufacturing line for either in-line or in-situ treatment of substrates.
This article was sourced from PVA TePla America, LLC.