Cleaning wafer substrates of metal contamination while maintaining wafer smoothness

A process for cleaning a microelectronics wafer substrate surface to remove metal contamination while maintaining wafer substrate smoothness, said process comprising preparing said wafer substrate surface for generating a circuit on said wafer substrate surface so as to provide a substantially oxide-free wafer substrate surface by contacting the wafer substrate surface with a cleaning composition for a time and temperature sufficient to clean the wafer substrate surface, said cleaning composition consisting essentially of an aqueous solution of an alkaline, metal ion-free base and a polyhydroxy compound containing from two to ten --OH groups and having the formula:

• ##STR4## wherein or in which --R--, --R.sup.1 --, --R.sup.2 -- and --R.sup.3 -- are alkylene radicals having two to ten carbon atoms, x is a whole integer of from 1 to 4 and y is a whole integer of from 1 to 8, with the proviso that the number of carbon atoms in the polyhydroxy compound does not exceed ten, wherein the water present in the aqueous solution is at least about 40% by weight of the cleaning composition;
• and wherein, during the preparation of said wafer substrate surface for generating said circuit, said contacting of said wafer substrate surface with said cleaning composition is carried out without contacting said wafer substrate surface with hydrogen peroxide, and without utilizing oxide-removing reagents, prior to generating any circuit on said wafer substrate surface.