“…The transient multi-MPa pressure of the superheated ETM may be applied underneath the contaminant particles as a ''vapor piston'' force (Lu et al, 1999(Lu et al, , 2000Zheng et al, 2001), while the lifting-off ETM also exerts a viscous ''drag'' force on the particles (Kudryashov & Allen, 2002b, 2005. Lift-off distances for submm ETM layers may approach sub-mm magnitudes (Kudryashov & Allen, 2003, 2004b, enabling the removal of contaminant particles sufficiently far away from the substrate to prevent redeposition irrespective of their size. Importantly, F B , being a function of the ETM, and related steam laser cleaning threshold, F SLC , are usually much lower than DLC thresholds for sub-100 nm model particle contaminants ( Figure 1).…”