title: Cleaning of diamond nanoindentation probes with oxygen plasma and carbon dioxide snow.
abstract: Diamond nanoindentation probes may perform thousands of indentations over years of service life. There is a broad agreement that the probes need frequent cleaning, but techniques for doing so are mostly anecdotes shared between experimentalists. In preparation for the measurement of the shape of a nanoindentation probe by a scanning probe microscope, cleaning by carbon dioxide snow jets and oxygen plasma was investigated. Repeated indentation on a thumbprint-contaminated surface formed a compound that was very resistant to removal by solvents, CO(2) snow, and plasma. CO(2) snow cleaning is found to be a generally effective cleaning procedure.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory, 100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 8520, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899-8520, USA.
authors.forename: Dylan J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Morris