UV/ozone cleaning of platinum/iridium kilogram mass prototypes

Platinum–iridium (Pt/Ir) kilogram mass prototypes are known to gain contamination from the environment in which they are stored. The current method of cleaning these mass prototypes is called nettoyage–lavage and involves the physical rubbing of a kilogram with a chamois leather cloth soaked in a solvent followed by removal of any solvent residue using a jet of steam water. The manual nature of the technique means the effectiveness of the cleaning process is reliant on the human operative. An alternative cleaning method involving exposure to ultraviolet light and ozone (UV/O3) has been tested on Pt/Ir foils and kilogram mass prototypes. The changes to the surface of the Pt/Ir foils as a result of this process have been quantified using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and have shown a clear reduction in the quantity of carbonaceous contamination. Variation of the UV intensity, ozone concentration and exposure duration enabled the optimum cleaning conditions to be established. The UV/O3 cleaning method was then used to clean two Pt/Ir kilogram mass prototypes and gravimetric weighing of the kilograms before and after cleaning gave the amount of contamination removed. These gravimetric weighing results demonstrated that UV/O3 cleaning was as effective as the nettoyage–lavage process.