The removal efficiency of the organic contaminants existing on the surface of silicon wafers by a dry cleaning method using UV/O-3 and ECR plasma is discussed in this paper. After cleaning, Si wafers are characterized by attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and atomic force microscropy (AFM). In UV/O-3 cleaning, the exposure time to reach the detection limit for organic contaminants in ATR-FTIR is about 10 min and the RMS surface roughness reduces with increasing exposure time. In ECR hydrogen plasma cleaning, the RMS surface roughness reduces significantly with increasing the exposure time but the removal of organic contaminants from the silicon wafer is not very effective. In ECR oxygen plasma cleaning, the exposure times to reach both the detection limit and the lowest RMS roughness are 40 and 10 s, respectively, and the optimum exposure time is suggested to be 30-40 s, considering both the effects of cleaning and surface roughening. Therefore, dry cleaning using ECR oxygen plasma seems to be more effective than that using ECR hydrogen plasma or the UV/O-3 cleaning for the removal of organic contaminants. Also, the removal mechanisms of the organic contaminants in UV/O-3 and ECR plasma cleanings are discussed in detail. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.