Cleaning Solutions

For customers with extremely high cleanliness requirements, such as in medical engineering, aerospace and the manufacture of process devices for the semiconductor industry, Fraunhofer IPA offers integrated, reproducible, cleaning solutions that can be fully validated. The spectrum of cleaning technologies ranges from a solvent-based cleaning process in a cleanliness zone, e.g. as a first step after part production, to multiple-bath ultrasound precision cleaning in a cleanroom with the highest cleanliness class. If necessary, further cleaning steps such as CO2-based cleaning or plasma activation can be added. Cleaning processes, as well as the packaging of the high-purity cleaning goods, are also validated in a cleanroom.

CO2-based cleaning solutions

As shown in recent years in diverse industrial applications, the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a cleaning medium is still full of interesting potentials and allows cleaning solutions to be created in a form which was not possible in the past. Especially the efficient, localized dry-cleaning method of CO2-snow jet cleaning offers numerous possibilities for integration into automated, serial production processes, which were inconceivable with liquid cleaning techniques.

In order to be able to apply the potentials of CO2 to other applications, Fraunhofer IPA operates two special CO2-cleaning laboratories: one is in a cleanliness zone and the other in a Class 1 cleanroom (ISO 14644-1). To develop application-specific processes, we have a range of cleaning methods and tools at our disposal:

- Spot-jet nozzles for cleaning defined areas on surfaces to remove mm-sized or even nm-sized particles
- Cleaning lances for cleaning the inner surfaces of tubular components (diameters ranging between 10 and 300 mm)
- Cleaning injectors for the hypercritical cleaning of blind bores and small parts
- Rinsing reactors for the hypercritical cleaning of inner component surfaces, e.g. thin tubes or capillaries.