home-made plasma cleaner
July 23, 2014 at 12:52 pm | sam | everyday science, hardware, science@home, stupid technologyI really want a plasma cleaner, for cleaning coverslips and activating glass for PDMS bonding, but they cost thousands of dollars. I thought that was a lot of money for a glorified microwave. So I made my own.
Drill a few holes in glass:
Make a PDMS seal (thanks Kate):
Glue the chamber:
We’re ready to go!
Fill the chamber with argon, evacuate it, turn on the microwave oven, and … voila! … a plasma:
Below are slides before and after (right) plasma treatment. You can see the contact angle of water is dramatically reduced.
It works!
Well, not really. I found that the plasma really only stays lit with argon. When I flow air in, it extinguishes, but also burns some of the rubber hoses. That adds more dirt to my slides than I want.
Conclusion: don’t do this at home. :)
(Well, that might be a little harsh. It does work well to bond PDMS to glass. And I’ll try a longer etch sometime to see if it will ever clean the coverslips.)
5 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Powered by WordPress, Theme Based on "Pool" by Borja Fernandez
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS.
^Top^
How creative of you. Plasma etch Inc. just created a new Plasma cleaning system called the Magna that is the first system that doesn’t require CF4 gas.. Check it out.. http://www.plasmaetch.com
Comment by Sarah Flagg — July 23, 2014 #
[…] had previously made my own plasma cleaner using a pump and an old microwave. While my homemade version technically worked, it was complicated to use, unwieldily, and […]
Pingback by Everyday Scientist » plasma cleaner review — December 18, 2014 #
You have great passion and hand for inventions. I promise I will not do this at home (x.o)
Comment by Mateo — February 26, 2015 #
Can you put peice of metal into the argon chamber for cleaning? Will it arc? Kgeorge@blade-energy.com
Comment by K — August 5, 2021 #
I didn’t try, but yeah it would probably arc.
Comment by sam — August 27, 2021 #