Plasma Cleaning and Etching
Cleaning of medical devices or components for critical application areas such as those found in the aerospace industry require special conditions.
Traditional wet chemistries such a detergent wash or acid etch often leave unwanted residues and in some cases will not remove specific elements of a contamination. Gas plasma offers a clean, residue free method of both cleaning and etching of surfaces.
By altering the plasma pre-cursers and parameters used, a wide range of cleaning and conditioning processes are available at Innovatek Medical.
Monolayers of contamination can be removed from polymeric materials without etching the underlying substrate. Aggressive chemical etching of metals and restructuring of the oxide surface is achievable to provide a good interface for bonding. Combinations of sputtering and reactive ion etching are used to obtain the required cleaning or etching performance.
Cleanliness levels can be characterised using a quantitative surface sensitive analytical method such as XPS (X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy) and the level of residues removed monitored. Following a validation protocol each batch can be supplied with a level of cleanliness which meets customer specification. Likewise, etching of a substrate can be followed by functionalisation to 
provide the desired combination of surface topography and chemical speciation within a controlled, validated process.
Masking and shadowing can be performed to etch specific component areas if required.
The cleaning and etching processes at Innovatek Medical can also be used for sterilisation and reduction of bio-burden. A combination of oxidative plasma species and ion sputtering can clean or sterilise a range of medical materials.
Surface polymer cross-linking with inert gas pre-cursors is also possible. Plasma can be used to cross-link to either stop migration of species outwards or to improve barrier properties of some elastomers.
Processes are available which include :
- The removal of surface contaminants associated with moulding and extrusion
- Introduction of oxygen based functionality into polymeric surfaces for improved wettability
- Direct fluorination for hydrophobic properties
- Instrument and device cleaning
- Selective etching of polymers or metals
- Titanium and alloy oxide conditioning.
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