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. 2023 Jul 14;13(1):11387.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-37813-7.

Monolayer organic thin films as particle-contamination-resistant coatings

Ruobin Jia  1   2 , Brittany N Hoffman  1 , Alexei V Kozlov  1 , Stavros G Demos  1 , Alexander A Shestopalov  3   4
Affiliations

Monolayer organic thin films as particle-contamination-resistant coatings

Ruobin Jia et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Three organic monolayers coatings were developed and tested for their effectiveness to increase cleaning efficiency of attached microscale particles by air flows. The experiments were performed using silica substrates coated with these organic thin films and subsequently exposed to stainless-steel and silica microparticles as a model of contamination. Laser-induced-damage tests confirmed that the coatings do not affect the laser-induced-damage threshold values. The particle exposure results suggest that although the accumulation of particles is not significantly affected under the experimental conditions used in this work, the coated substrates exhibit significantly improved cleaning efficiency with a gas flow. A size-distribution analysis was conducted to study the adsorption and cleaning efficiency of particles of different sizes. It was observed that larger size (> 5-μm) particles can be removed from coated substrates with almost 100% efficiency. It was also determined that the coatings improve the cleaning efficiency of the smaller particles (≤ 5 μm) by 17% to 30% for the stainless steel metal and 19% to 38% for the silica particles.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Schematic diagram of the particle exposure experimental setup.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Functionalization steps of damage test optics (DTO’s) with silane- and carbene-based monolayers.
Figure 3
Figure 3
UV–Visible spectra of coating materials in carbon tetrachloride solution (50 mM); data reported for M1, M2, and M3 with solvent CCl4 from 300 to 1100 nm.
Figure 4
Figure 4
LIDT results from four test groups of coated and bare substrates under 10 ps and 600 fs pulse widths.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Stability of coatings presented by XPS peak area ratio. Namely C 1s/Si 2p ratio change in three months on (a) bare DTO and (b) Me-DTO; C 1s/Si 2p ratio and F 1s/Si 2p ratio change in three months on (c) NHS-DTO and (d) F-DTO.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Sample metal particle exposure images (a) before and (b) after cleaning by nitrogen on bare DTO; sample metal particle exposure images (c) before and (d) after cleaning by nitrogen on F-DTO; (e) average metal particle counts per image and size distribution; (f) nitrogen flow removal efficiency for metal particles.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Sample silica particle exposure images (a) before and (b) after cleaning by nitrogen on bare DTO; sample silica particle exposure images (c) before and (d) after cleaning by nitrogen on F-DTO; (e) average silica particle counts per image and size distribution; (f) nitrogen flow removal efficiency for silica particles.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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