Hello,
We have a thermal evaporator in the lab which we use mostly to evaporate metal contacts (Al, Au, Ag, Ca, Cr, etc.), sometimes we evaporate polymers too. It's quite old and its performance was reduced over the years. Of course the time is a major factor, but I guess that a good cleaning can improve the performance. A lot of material layers has accumulated at the wall and other parts. Once in awhile we clean them with kimewipes and ethanol, but it's not looking that good. Is there any cleaning procedure to remove these excess layers?
Well, depending on the material of your walls you have a series of options:
-if it's steel and roughness doesn't matter, you can sandblast the dirt away; it's fast and easy to do
-you can use polish from your preferred do-it-yourself-store. Usually you really don't need anything fancy, only if you polish surfaces that were once electropolished, you can use a more sophisticated method like cerium dioxide.
-you can try ultrasonic baths, but use a solvent or cleaning agent that your wall material can handle damaged-free.
In any case make sure you wear facial protection and wash off all polish/sand/cleaning agent traces before you restart.
The walls are stainless steel I guess.
I think sandblast wouldn't be a good idea since it can course scratches which can harm the UHV.
Regarding UHV, sandblasting is no problem whatsoever. I've done it dozens of times and never had any subsequent vacuum issues. The only part that you really need to protect are flanges, so for a CF sealed machine, keep the old copper seals on the ring so it's protected.
Hello, how did you clean tungsten or Molyneux boats used for metal evaporation assuming I do not have many boats for all and metals and maybe other compounds as well?
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