When wafers are stored in a plastic storage box to protect them from airborne contaminants, volatile organics from the polymeric construction material adsorb onto the wafer surface. Both UV/O-3 and ECR oxygen plasma techniques have been found to completely remove these organic contaminants adsorbed on the silicon surfaces up to the detection limit. After cleaning, Si wafers were characterized using attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform, infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Organic contaminants were eliminated more efficiently by the ECR oxygen plasma technique than the UV/O-3 technique when they were employed under optimum process conditions. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.