Ionic contamination reduction with dry ice cleaning

Abstract

Compared with routine methods, dry ice cleaning is an innovative, inexpensive and green technology, which efficiently cleans printed circuit boards (PCBs) and decreases levels of ionic contamination. Due to its outstanding performance, dry ice cleaning is suitable for removing flux residues. In this study, boards that have been artificially contaminated by flux were blasted by dry ice with different parameters. The influence of dry ice cleaning on different surface finishes was comprehensively investigated. It was shown that the efficiency of dry ice cleaning is comparable with other methods and is quantifiable. Furthermore, dry ice cleaning can effectively remove pollution on PCB surfaces, yielding a noticeable and ideal cleaning effect without decreasing the solderability of different surface finishes.

No-clean flux residues detection with impedance measurements

“…5) Overall, the results show that the residues of the WOAs used in no-clean fluxes can affect the electronic properties of board surfaces. Therefore, minimalization of the flux usage might be important [6] or post-cleaning methods [7] should be applied when electronics need to operate under safety-critical conditions.…”