Bake-out
Encyclopedia
Bake-out is a term used in several areas of technology, fabrication, and in building construction, referring to the act of using heat and sometimes a vacuum
Vacuum
In everyday usage, vacuum is a volume of space that is essentially empty of matter, such that its gaseous pressure is much less than atmospheric pressure. The word comes from the Latin term for "empty". A perfect vacuum would be one with no particles in it at all, which is impossible to achieve in...

 to release volatile compounds from something as a form of cleaning or processing. Bake-out is an artificial acceleration of the process of outgassing
Outgassing
Outgassing is the release of a gas that was dissolved, trapped, frozen or absorbed in some material. As an example, research has shown how the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has sometimes been linked to ocean outgassing...

.

In various physics and vacuum device engineering, such as particle accelerator
Particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: electrostatic and oscillating field accelerators.In...

s, semiconductor fabrication
Semiconductor fabrication
Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create the integrated circuits that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer...

, and vacuum tube
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...

s, the term is used to refer to a period of time where a part or device is placed in a vacuum chamber (or its operating vacuum state, for devices which operate in a vacuum) and heated, usually by built in heaters. This drives off gases which can then be removed by a vacuum pump system.

In building construction, the term refers to a process using heat to try and remove volatile organic compound
Volatile organic compound
Volatile organic compounds are organic chemicals that have a high vapor pressure at ordinary, room-temperature conditions. Their high vapor pressure results from a low boiling point, which causes large numbers of molecules to evaporate or sublimate from the liquid or solid form of the compound and...

s such as solvents used in paint, carpets, and other building materials from the building after construction. The building is heated to a much higher temperature than normal and left at that temperature for extended periods of time, to encourage such compounds to vaporize into the air, which can then be vented.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK