PROCESS FOR REMOVING DUST FROM SURFACES WITHIN LOW-PRESSURE GAS, BY PULSED PLASMA JET

摘要

The invention relates to a process for removing dust from the surfaces within gas at low-pressure, in the range of several mTorr up to tens of Torr. According to the invention, the process comprises the stage of creating a plasma jet by applying a voltage of several kilovolts between two electrodes (1, 2) which are placed, insulated from one another by a cylindrical insulating piece (3), in a vacuum enclosure (4) and are connected to a capacitor (5), the stage of initiating the gas discharge by controlling some switches (8, 9), the stage of vacuuming the enclosure (4) using a turbo-molecular pump (20) and a preliminary vacuum pump (21), the stage of introducing through a connection (26) an inert gas, such as Ar, Xe, He, or air, N, COor mixtures thereof, into the enclosure (4), where the electrodes are positioned in relation to a surface (29) to be cleaned so that the plasma jet sweeps out the surface and entrains and removes the dust micro-particles from it.