Piranha not only removes the organic mater, it also slightly etches the glass surface and also increases the negative charge of glass.

So piranha is a bit more than just removing organic layer.

When it comes to just removing the organic contaminants from glass surface, Acetone should be better than Ethanol and sonication in acetone helps

In short piranha is much more efficient way of cleaning glass when compared to Ethanol

Hi Jeannie, an alternate method to that suggested by Dr. Arcot which will basically accomplish the same thing as the solution based method of piranha treatmeant he referred to is to use oxygen plasma cleaning. This requires access to a plasma cleaner that can run an O2 plasma. This is quite common to see in the literature published that people have done to clean most metal oxide substrates that have been used to act as planar supports for certain the assembly of structures like soft nanomaterial structures.

In addition to this and the piranha treatment method, an alternative solution based method piranha solution treatment which is also not as harsh or hazardous to deal with is to use sonication with a 0.01M solution of NaOH. Since pH > 11 the basic solution will also lightly etch or dissolve the glass surface and remove both organic impurities (it doesnt oxidize organic residue like the piranha or plasma treatment but will still lead to their chemical removal from the surface) and those from manufacturing in the surface of the glass. Also it ensures like both piranha and O2 plasma treatment that the surface of the glass is as hydrophilic as possible and so many silanol groups rather than siloxane bridges, which will deprotonate as Dr. Arcot pointed out when slides cleaned this way are placed in water.

If you are trying to reuse slides that have been used to support organic materials then I would suggest using at least piranha or plasma as these tend to be harsher methods for removing organic contaminants.

Hope this helps,

Jacob H. Prosser

Hi Jeannie, I agree with Lokanathan Arcot. If Piranha is not available; I would rather use Acetone instead of Ethanol. In my case cleaning glass substrates with Acetone worked just fine.

All the best,

Maria

I m also using glass slides for my study and usually wash with acetone and it works fine.

Hi

we usually first wash our glass in acetone ( with sonication ) and then wash it with ethanol. if we want work tight we wash it with attenuate KOH ( for removing organic contaminant ) and attenuate HCl ( for removing metallic contaminant ).

but most of time washing with acetone and ethanol is enough.

I also agree with Sara, of course, if you have no special requirements precisely to a lack of organics on the surface.

Hi,

In my lab, we use UV/ozone to remove any light organic contaminants on the substrate. It is pretty efficient and clean.

Hello,

In all my PhD study I used the following procedure to clean the glass substrates which gave better results:

Firstly, they were cleaned in a detergent solution (Teepol) and then rinsed with deionized water. Then the slides were cleaned using an ultrasonic bath in anhydrous ethanol for 15 min followed by sequential rinsing with distilled water, then acetone, then isopropanol and finally drying under nitrogen or in an oven.

Just dip it for some time in hot chromic acid. And then clean with distilled water. After that clean with acetone in an ultrasonic bath. Then blown with dry air.

u can clean the slides in acetone and then dip in isopropyl alcohol (IPA).

U can also dip the slides in Piranha and then again dip in the acetone or IPA.

Almost all the answers given are correct, but you have to be careful of which kind of slides you want to clean up!!!

U can use alcohol ,acetone finally ether to clean glass slides

Ethanol will do some cleaning, however if you truly want to remove organic residues, you have to do Piranha clean. I personally try to avoid dealing with acids when cleaning if possible, but sometimes there's no other way :)

Standard solvent clean would be: ultrasound in acetone, rinse (and maybe ultrasound) in methanol, rinse in DI water, blow-dry in clean air/ nitrogen.

Also if your slides can handleit's good to do oxygen plasma after that - that will burn all organic residues from the surface...

Ultrasound in ethanol will work, but not sure how good that will be.

I think the most effective way to clean your slide is soaking in acetone for sometime followed by ultrasonic bath. Make sure your glass is not fibre glass otherwise the procedure works well.

Before any method below you want to thoroughly clean your substrate by brushing with detergent first.

1. Piranha for 15 min definitely does the job (in case you only have organic suspension on the substrate).

2. Somebody mentioned UV/ozone, it also works, but may take longer time (15~20 min depends on how much dirt you have on your substrate) and you may want to run couple of times to make sure it's completely clean.

3. In some cases you are using a metal or semi－metallic substrate with some organic dirt, you can also use hot concentrated sulfuric acid (heat it up to 100 oC). It takes even longer time but prevent dissolving your substrate.

Good luck.

Depends on what you mean by "clean" and what kind of slide you are cleaning, hahaa! We do a basic clean which is suitable for applications in our lab for glass slide to remove organic matter and dust.

Sonicate in each for 10 minutes in order: Acetone, DI water, Methanol, DI water.

we use following steps to clean glass slides

1-%10 HCl acid and rinse with deionised water

2-%10 acetic acidand rinse with deionised water

3-rinse with iso prophanol and rinse again deionised water and dry with N2 gas or in an oven

and never use acetone. it remains residuals

Just to be thorough, if you choose to utilize Acetone for the best possible degreasing, you also need to use Methanol or IPA while the sample is still wet to get the Acetone off. The acetone if allowed to dry leaves a film of highly adherent white particles.

Sulfuric/H2O2 (Piranha) should not attack the slide, but will attack your organics (skin included) so wear Protective gear if you chose to go that way. A quick 30sec dip would be sufficient on new slides. Follow with VERY thorough DI flush/rinse.

Drying - warm/dry N2 or good CDA gun with inline filter (avoid depositing new particles) helps to avoid water spots. Followed by some time in a low temp (40-70C) bake oven to finish driving off moisture is a good idea (if purged with N2, makes a good storage spot for cleaned slides to live until needed).

Oh... good, powder free, clean gloves are a key ingredient to avoid depositiong skin oils on your clean slides.

Methanol should be avoided due to cancer risk etc., ethanol after acetone both in ultrasonic bath will do the same.

I do colloidal suspension drop cast on glass slides as well and for cleaning the slides i follow these steps.

1) Sonicate the slides in Acetone for 10mins.

2) Drain off the acetone and immediately (before the slides dry), sonicate them in IPA for 10mins.

3) Drain IPA and repeat the sonication with DI Water.

4) Remember to use clean lab gloves and clean tweezers for this purpose, incase you don't want to leave oil from skin or contaminants from tweezers.

5) Dry them and Plasma clean them for 5mins.

I do this before i do electrical measurements. So this works perfectly for me.

A dilute version of piranha is the best alternative, there is nothing that resists 10 min at 80 C :)

but best of all is chromic acid! :D though this is really a problem if you are afraid of getting cancer.

(and those two comments above assume your slides are made of glass)

Aceton cleaning followed by ethanol bath will give good result

Acetone or Iso-propyl alcohol is best option.

You can clean your slides by using this procedure:

1, Acetone.

2. Piranha.

3. Ethanol.

4. Dry with a flux of Nitrogen

From my experience, you can use :

dip in piranha, then Acetone, IPA and dry with Nitrogen Gun..

In our lab for cleaning highly dedicated analytically instrument (glass parts)

we first clean with Acetone and then with ethanol (both purity is greater than 99%) and dry with moisture free air

First soap solution, followed by Acid, alkali, chromic acid boiling, water and acetone, followed by ethanol and dry air are very good for glass slides

Usually I use acetone to remove grass. Piranha is stronger, but when I need very clean glasses, first I dip the glasses in piranha solution, leave it during 20 minutes, then wash them with distilled water. The glasses washed with piranha become to hydrophylic for what I want (not colloidal suspension). Because of this the glasses are boiled during 30 minutes in distilled water to become less hydrophylic. Then they are sonicated in acetone, isopropanol and dried with N2. Also these solvents can have some effect on the surface energy of glass. When this is not good for me, after piranha I just washed the glasses with distilled water and dry them in a vacuum oven.