In Situ High-Speed Electrochemical Sensing of Surface Cleaning

固/液界面的清洁在许多人类活动中起着至关重要的作用。无论是在食品工业、电子元件制造、医疗保健行业的仪器消毒还是作为基本卫生要求，都会出现同样的问题：如何以有效的方式清洁所涉及的材料，而不会使其降解或损坏？因此，已经开发了许多技术方法。在用于清洁表面的许多技术中，超声波系统（如清洁浴）具有许多吸引人的品质。这项技术利用声音驱动的气泡动作来清洁界面。最终，声音和气泡的相互作用被认为是驱动清洁作用的原因，尽管确切的机制可能会因所采用的条件而异。空化当然是一个关键因素，因为不寻常的物理和化学效应（例如产生强氧化剂）在这一作用中是有用的。超声波清洗的优点是，它是相对简单的部署与无处不在的超声波清洗浴常见于许多学术，医疗，工业，甚至家庭环境。然而，所有清洁系统都存在技术限制。对于评估和开发用于特定基材的任何清洁技术来说，关键是测量“它有多清洁？“和”是清洁系统良性？'.在这里，凹陷，特别是那些需要进一步修改（例如通过电镀）的凹陷是相关的。例如，如果调用凹部的超声波清洗，则已经清洗凹部中的多远，以及是否存在可能抑制结构的进一步关键处理的残留气泡？为了解决这些问题，该项目将利用一套控制良好的实验，旨在了解在清洁过程中发挥作用的重要因素。这些传感策略将基于新的敏感系统，最终目标是生产一种原型可部署传感器，用于在一系列商业和学术环境中进行清洁评估。

Cleaning at a solid/liquid interface plays a vital role in many human activities. Whether this is in the food industry, the fabrication of electronic components, sterilisation of instrumentation in the healthcare sector or as a basic hygiene requirement, the same issue occurs: how to clean the material involved in an efficient manner but without degrading or damaging it? As such, many technological approaches have been developed. Amongst the many techniques employed to clean surfaces, ultrasonic systems (like cleaning baths) have many appealing qualities. This technology uses the action of bubbles driven by sound to clean an interface. Ultimately it is the interaction of sound and bubbles that is thought to drive the cleaning action although the exact mechanism may vary depending on the conditions employed. Cavitation is certainly a key factor, as the unusual physical as well as the chemical effects (the production of strong oxidants for example) are useful in this role. Ultrasonic cleaning has the advantage that it is relatively simple to deploy with the ubiquitous ultrasonic cleaning bath common in many academic, medical, industrial, and even domestic environments. However, there are technological limitations in all cleaning systems. Critical to the assessment and development of any cleaning technology for a particular substrate is a measure of 'how clean is it?' and 'is the cleaning system benign?'. Here recesses and in particular those that need further modification (through electroplating, for example) are pertinent. For example, if ultrasonic cleaning of a recess is invoked, how far into the recess has been cleaned and are there residual bubbles which may inhibit further critical treatment of the structure? In order to address these issues, this project will utilise a set of well controlled experiments designed to understand the important factors which come into play during cleaning. These sensing strategies will be based on new sensitive systems with the ultimate aim of producing a prototype deployable sensor for cleaning assessment within a range of commercial and academic environments.