Cleaning of diamond nanoindentation probes with oxygen plasma and carbon dioxide snow

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. [doi: 10.1063/1.3266972]