Flypaper for Particulate
Flypaper for Particulate: New Y-12 Tack Cloth Leaves No Sticky Residue
Mon, 19 February 2007
A research chemist at the Y‑12 National Security Complex has invented a way to clean surfaces that leaves no sticky residue.
The new invention is called the Negligible-Residue Tack Cloth or Non-tacky Tack Cloth. Tack cloth works by trapping dust, dirt, or other particles in the cloth as it is wiped over the surface of the material being cleaned.
While Y‑12’s primary application for the tack cloth is removal of legacy beryllium contamination, it also has the potential for wide application in industry—including the semiconductor and electronics industries—where surface cleanliness is critical.
“Tack cloths have been around for years. There’s a whole clean-room industry that uses wipes and solvents to clean surfaces. A lot of the time they are just moving dust around. This new tack cloth is like flypaper for particulate. The curious thing about this new negligible-residue cloth and is that it doesn’t feel tacky-sticky. It’s a non-tacky tack cloth,” said Ron Simandl, the BWXT Y‑12 chemist who developed the cloth.
Simandl’s work at Y‑12 focused on removing beryllium contamination from surfaces to protect workers from the hazards of exposure to beryllium, which can cause serious illness in people who are sensitive to the material. Beryllium is a silver-gray metal used in a number of industrial applications because of its unique properties. At Y‑12, it is used in nuclear weapons production.
Commercial cleaning cloths are available for a variety of applications. And while some commercial wipes are better than others, in years of trying, Y‑12 researchers have not found a product that will clean a contaminated surface to a non-detectable level while at the same time leaving no detectable residue.
Simandl’s tack cloth removes beryllium contamination yet leaves no detectable sticky residue.
“Beryllium is an issue at Y‑12. We are always looking for ways to lower to the maximum extent possible the potential for exposure to beryllium. We had tried a number of tack cloths, tackifiers and commercial cleaning agents, but none that would get us to the sort of ‘holy grail’ of below detectable levels for beryllium contamination. This new tack cloth has shown consistent results in cleaning surfaces below detection levels with no sticky residue,” Simandl said.
“I had been thinking about this problem for about 30 years and had experimented with various types of tackifiers,” Simandl said, “We had tried various commercial wipes along with a number of commercial cleaners. We tested the best commercially available products against the new tack cloth. None of the commercially available ones we tried could remove particulate to below detectable levels and leave no residue behind.”
This new negligible-residue cloth was designed to go after particles on the nanoscale because the level of detection for beryllium contamination is incredibly small—one-tenth of a nanogram per square centimeter.
“If you can visualize just one single speck of contamination that a young person could barely make out with his/her naked eye and then ‘crush’ that single speck and uniformly distribute this over one sheet of notebook paper, you will have our limit of detection with current technology,” Simandl said.
BWXT Y-12, a limited liability enterprise of BWX Technologies Inc. and Bechtel National Inc., operates the Y‑12 National Security Complex for the National Nuclear Security Administration.