A novel cavitation probe design and some preliminary measurements of its application to megasonic cleaning.

Cavitation is an effective physical mechanism for concentrating mechanical energy. Accordingly, it has wide applications in such diverse fields as sonochemistry, in which chemical reactions are initiated or accelerated, or in the electronic component cleaning industry in which particles (and other materials) are removed from surfaces. However, devices designed to act as cavitation monitors have had little success, partly because their intrusiveness often affects the cavitation field itself.