Plasma Cleaning of Space-Borne Hybrid Integrated Circuits: An Experimental Study

A novel plasma cleaning technique was developed to clean the space-borne thick film modules, comprising, but not limited to the hybrid integrated circuits (HIC), electronic components, thick-film substrate, heat-sink and wire connections.The influence of the plasma cleaning conditions on the cleanness, mechanical behavior, electronic properties and reliability of the plasma cleaned modules was investigated with X-ray imaging, water contact angle measurement and bonding strength evaluation.The results show that the newly-developed plasma cleaning well satisfies the stringent requirements of the space-borne thick film modules.Besides, the novel plasma cleaning technique outperforms the conventional cleaning methods, including chemical cleaning, ultra-sonic cleaning and mechanical cleaning, because of higher reliability, better cleanliness, non-destruction, vibration free and little damage.