CLEAN ROOM WIPER

Improved low linting, low sodium ion content, wettable nonwoven wiper is provided through the use of a treatment involving a mixture of wetting agents. The wiper of the invention maintains the excellent wiping and low linting characteristics of nonwoven wipers while greatly reducing the amount of sodium ions present in the wiper and avoiding contamination problems especially prevalent in wipe applications for the electronics industry. Specifically, the combined wetting agent treatment includes a mixture of sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate such as Aerosol* OT and a nonionic surfactant such as alkyl phenoxy ethanol (Triton*X-100). The preferred mixtures are about 25 to 75% sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate with a ratio of about 40 to 60 preferred and about 50/50 especially preferred. The result is a wiper having essentially the desired wettability of those made with 100% sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate wetting agent and yet having only about half the sodium ion content. The wiper, therefore, can be employed advantageously in clean room applications such as the manufacture of micro-electronic devices where the presence of greater amounts of sodium ions can be very detrimental due to changes of electrical properties of the semiconductor devices. Substrates for the wiper may include various synthetic filamentary material such as polyolefins, including polyethylene *trade mark and polypropylene, and others which will be apparent to those skilled in the art.