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Chemical cleaning can be part of a manufacturing procedure to prepare products for the next process in line or as part of a final treatment for functional use.  Cleaning processes may remove unwanted stains, contamination, surface or trapped chemicals or remove dust and debris.  Determination of the nature of contaminants on a physical and chemical level as well as understanding the substrate materials chemistry is vital to determination of a reliable and effective chemical cleaning process.  LPD Lab Services provides both characterisation of contamination and practical advice for effective cleaning solutions and methodology.

 The laboratory has extensive experience in diagnosing and eliminating product and process contamination including cleaning, degreasing and subsequent rinse processes.  It also offers practical recommendations of alternative methods.

• Alternative cleaning processes
• Tuning process recipes
• Improved working practices
• Process control methods
• Site visits and technical sanity audits from experienced product cleaning expert.

Surface Analysis techniques in particular are ideal for tuning of cleaning and rinsing processes with their surface chemical sensitivity.  Rinsing practices are key as use of town water, insufficient rinse times or poor refreshing practices of baths with respect to process product throughput, can leave unwanted staining and contamination.

We have an ideal range of surface analysis techniques that can help identify cleaning, degreasing and rinsing issues.  These include: XPS, SIMS and AES / SAM coupled with SEM / EDX and FTIR.

Tighter environmental and Health and Safety regulations mean that many industries are required to replace solvent based cleaning / degreasing processes with aqueous-based systems.  Although aqueous degreasers are safer for operators, they tend not to be as effective:  They leave remnants on the material surfaces, potentially affecting a component’s fitness for use or downstream manufacturing.  The lab has extensive experience in the change over of solvent based cleaning / degreasing processes to aqueous and also of the problems this can lead to.  We can work to isolate / identify contamination levels and offer elimination advice with optimised cleaning agent formulation, depending on our findings.

Typical Cleaning and Rinsing Process Improvement Applications:-

• Optimisation of aqueous degreasing and rinsing to replace a solvent cleaning process.
• Effectiveness of an aqueous degreasing process evaluated and improved by XPS.
• Degreasing process optimization prior to painting.
• SEM of microscopic roughness to investigate difficulties in product cleaning due to trapped volumes.
• Identification and elimination of unknown stains on fabrics, materials and manufactured components by XPS, FTIR and SEM.
• Root cause analysis of metal surface discolouration by SIMS, XPS and SEM / EDX.
• Weak boundary layer determination in adhesive & coating problems.
• Fine tuning of cleaning, degreasing and final rinsing processes to remove stains.
• Contamination on circuit board soldering joints.
• Failing paint coatings on car bodies and car sub-components.
• Delamination of metallic coatings on test equipment.
• Adhesive and sealant failure investigations and formulation improvement.

Dust and particulate issues are also a common problem across manufacturing industries and during product and process development.  It is key to understand the physical and chemical nature as well as source of these contaminants to minimise and eliminate the problem.  The laboratory has particularly unique expertise in this area using combinations of optical microscopy and SEM / EDX coupled with extensive databases of contaminant types obtained Scalpel cut cross-sections of soft materials such as polymers and laminates from working for many years in support of cleanrooms and contamination sensitive products and processes.

Typical Dust and Particulate Applications:-

• Determination of the source of a dust problem.
• Dust pareto of constituents to establish a priority for tackling the sources.
• Identification of individual components in dust by SEM / EDX.
• Analysis of metallic, organic and inorganic particle contamination in Healthcare and other products.