Comparison of Cleaning Performance of CFC 113 and the Alternatives

According to the Montreal Protocol, CFC 113, one of the ozone-depleting substances, will be prohibited to use as a cleaning solvent essentially in the electronic industry. Therefore, the development of the alternative cleaning solvents to CFC 113 is being accelerated. A number of the alternative cleaning solvents are avialable on the market. The alternatives of Axarel 32(DuPont), Cleanthru 750H(KAO Chemical), and EC-Ultra(Petroferm) are chosen for the comparison of cleaning performance with CFC 113. The test methods for measuring the cleaning performance were composed of the measurement of the physical properties, the experiments on the material compatibility with cleaning solvents, the measurement of the evaporation rate, and finally the experiments of the removal efficiency. Normally the basic physical properties of the alternatives had higher boiling points, viscosity and surface tension, which were quite different to those of CFC 113. In terms of solubility of rosin-based flux, the solubilities of abietic acid (nonpolar organic) were similar, but those of the activator (polar organic) in the alternatives were better than CFC 113. The evaporation of the alternatives was very slow, compared to CFC 113, which had much lower boiling point. All the cleaning solvents showed the good material compatibility with FR4 and Cu-coated PCB. The better removal efficiencies of abietic acid were obtained when using the ultrasonic mechanical energy over the dipping method. The experiments also indicated the very slow-eavaporating solvent was not desirable with the dipping cleaning method, and the differences in the removal efficiency of the alternatives with the ultrasonic cleaning method were negligible. Among the alternatives, the overall cleaning performances were obsorved as almost similar. Before selecting the ultimate cleaning solvent, the application of cleaning machine, environmental issues, and economics are simultaneously considered with the cleaning performance.