XEI Scientific Inc., Redwood City, Calif., manufacturer of the popular Evactron De-Contaminator Plasma Cleaning System for electron microscopes and other vacuum chambers, was awarded U.S. patent #US8507879B2 on August 13, 2013, for an improved method and instrumentation for the production of oxygen radicals to be used in the cleaning of high vacuum instruments such as electron microscopes. The new method and apparatus comprises a vacuum ultraviolet light source housed in an irradiation chamber where it photo dissociates oxygen to be used downstream to clean the chamber or samples in the absence of the UV light. XEI founder and patent holder, Ronald Vane, says this new patent is a result of XEI’s on-going research into finding improved cleaning methods for electron microscopes and other high vacuum instruments. This patent research provides an optional path that supplements our work to improve XEI’s Evactron RF plasma cleaning systems. XEI has sold more than 1800 Evactron systems worldwide solving contamination problems in many different environments using instrumentation such as electron microscopes, FIBs and other vacuum sample chambers.
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