• Clean Technology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.95-102
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• 2008

In order to choose alternative environmental-friendly cleaning agents, it is very important in the present point that the systematic selection procedures should be introduced and applied to the industry through the evaluation of their cleaning ability, environmental characteristics, and economical factors, and that the objective and effective evaluation methods of cleanliness should be established for the industry. Thus, a novel cleaning evaluation method utilizing optically stimulated electron emission (OSEE) among various methods of cleaning ability was studied in this study. The contaminants used in this cleaning experiments were flux, solder, grease, cutting oil, and mixed soil of 35% grease and 65% cutting oil. The cleaning agents developed or prepared in our laboratory were employed and their cleaning ability were comparatively evaluated by the OSEE, gravimetry and contact angle methods. The experimental results in this work showed that flux cleaning efficiency measured by the OSEE method was similar to that of the gravimetric method, but that the OSEE method could not be compared with gravimetric method for the case of solder or grease cleaning because the contaminants radiate or absorb ultra-violet light. In case of cutting oil cleaning, the gravimetric method indicated its limitation of cleaning efficiency of cutting oil since it showed cleaning efficiency of 100%, even though residual soil remaining on the substrate surface a little after its cleaning. The comparative experimental results of cleaning ability evaluated by the OSEE- and contact angle measurement methods showed that they were similar in case of cleaning of flux, mixed soil and cutting oil. It was judged that the contact angle measurement method could evaluate the cleaning ability more precisely than the OSEE method for cleaning solder and grease.