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A cleanroom or clean room is an engineered space that maintains a very low concentration of airborne particulates. It is well-isolated, well-controlled from contamination, and actively cleansed. Such rooms are commonly needed for scientific research and in industrial production for all nanoscale processes, such as semiconductor device manufacturing. A cleanroom is designed to keep everything from dust to airborne organisms or vaporised particles away from it, and so from whatever material is being handled inside it.
A cleanroom can also prevent the escape of materials. This is often the primary aim in hazardous biology, nuclear work, pharmaceutics, and virology.
Cleanrooms typically come with a cleanliness level quantified by the number of particles per cubic meter at a predetermined molecule measure. The ambient outdoor air in a typical urban area contains 35,000,000 particles for each cubic meter in the size range 0.5 μm and bigger, equivalent to an ISO 9 certified cleanroom. By comparison, an ISO 14644-1 level 1 certified cleanroom permits no particles in that size range, and just 12 particles for each cubic meter of 0.3 μm and smaller. Semiconductor facilities often get by with level 7 or 5, while level 1 facilities are exceedingly rare.
By mid-1963, more than 200 U.S. industrial plants had such specially constructed facilities—then using the terminology “White Rooms,” “Clean Rooms,” or “Dust-Free Rooms”—including the Radio Corporation of America, McDonnell Aircraft, Hughes Aircraft, Sperry Rand, Sylvania Electric, Western Electric, Boeing, and North American Aviation.Koslow, Jules. “Industry’s Pursuit of Cleanliness.” Electronic Age 22:3 (Summer 1963), 22-25. RCA began such a conversion of part of its Cambridge, Ohio facilities in February 1961. Totalling 70,000 square feet, it was used to prepare control equipment for the Minuteman ICBM missiles.Koslow, Jules. “Industry’s Pursuit of Cleanliness.” Electronic Age 22:3 (Summer 1963), 22-25.
The majority of the integrated circuit manufacturing facilities in Silicon Valley were made by three companies: MicroAire, PureAire, and Key Plastics. These competitors made laminar flow units, glove boxes, cleanrooms and air showers, along with the chemical tanks and benches used in the "wet process" building of integrated circuits. These three companies were the pioneers of the use of Teflon for airguns, chemical pumps, scrubbers, water guns, and other devices needed for the production of integrated circuits. William (Bill) C. McElroy Jr. worked as an engineering manager, drafting room supervisor, QA/QC, and designer for all three companies, and his designs added 45 original patents to the technology of the time. McElroy also wrote a four-page article for MicroContamination Journal, wet processing training manuals, and equipment manuals for wet processing and cleanrooms.William (Bill) C. McElroy Jr., MicroAire Engineering Manager and acting VP; Kay Plastics Engineering Manager; PureAire Drafting Room Manager
Cleanrooms can range from the very small to the very large. On the one hand, a single-user laboratory can be built to cleanroom standards within several square meters, and on the other, entire manufacturing facilities can be contained within a cleanroom with factory floors covering thousands of square meters. Between the large and the small, there are also modular cleanrooms. They have been argued to lower costs of scaling the technology, and to be less susceptible to catastrophic failure.
With such a wide area of application, not every cleanroom is the same. For example, the rooms utilized in semiconductor manufacturing need not be sterile (i.e., free of uncontrolled microbes), In NASA's Sterile Areas, Plenty of Robust Bacteria New York Times, 9. October 2007 while the ones used in biotechnology usually must be. Vice versa, need not be absolutely pure of nanoscale inorganic salts, such as rust, while nanotechnology absolutely requires it. What then is common to all cleanrooms is strict control of airborne particulates, possibly with secondary decontamination of air, surfaces, workers entering the room, implements, chemicals, and machinery.
Sometimes particulates exiting the compartment are also of concern, such as in virology into dangerous , or where radioactive materials are being handled.
Within, air is constantly recirculated through fan units containing high-efficiency particulate absorbing filters (HEPA), and/or ultra-low particulate air (ULPA) filters to remove internally generated contaminants. Special lighting fixtures, walls, equipment and other materials are used to minimize the generation of airborne particles. Plastic sheets can be used to restrict air turbulence if the cleanroom design is of the laminar airflow type.
Air temperature and humidity levels inside a cleanroom are tightly controlled, because they affect the efficiency and means of air filtration. If a particular room requires low enough humidity to make static electricity a concern, it too will be controlled by, e.g., introducing controlled amounts of charged ions into the air using a corona discharge. Static discharge is of particular concern in the electronics industry, where it can instantly destroy components and circuitry.
Equipment inside any cleanroom is designed to generate minimal air contamination. The selection of material for the construction of a cleanroom should not generate any particulates; hence, monolithic epoxy or polyurethane floor coating is preferred. Buffed stainless steel or powder-coated mild steel sandwich partition panels and ceiling panel are used instead of iron alloys prone to rusting and then flaking. Corners like the wall to wall, wall to floor, wall to ceiling are avoided by providing coved surface, and all joints need to be sealed with epoxy sealant to avoid any deposition or generation of particles at the joints, by vibration and friction. Many cleanrooms have a "tunnel" design in which there are spaces called "service chases" that serve as air plenums carrying the air from the bottom of the room to the top so that it can be recirculated and filtered at the top of the cleanroom.
In addition to air filters, cleanrooms can also use Ultraviolet to disinfect the air. UV devices can be fitted into ceiling light fixtures and irradiate air, killing potentially infectious particulates, including 99.99 percent of airborne microbial and fungal contaminants. UV light has previously been used to clean surface contaminants in sterile environments such as hospital operating rooms. Their use in other cleanrooms may increase as equipment becomes more affordable. Potential advantages of UV-based decontamination includes a reduced reliance on chemical disinfectants and the extension of HVAC filter life.
Some cleanroom HVAC systems control the humidity to such low levels that extra equipment like Air ioniser are required to prevent electrostatic discharge problems. This is a particular concern within the semiconductor business, because static discharge can easily damage modern circuit designs. On the other hand, active ions in the air can harm exposed components as well. Because of this, most workers in high electronics and semiconductor facilities have to wear conductive boots while working. Low-level cleanrooms may only require special shoes, with completely smooth soles that do not track in dust or dirt. However, for safety reasons, shoe soles must not create slipping hazards. Access to a cleanroom is usually restricted to those wearing a cleanroom suit, including the necessary machinery.
In cleanrooms in which the standards of air contamination are less rigorous, the entrance to the cleanroom may not have an air shower. An anteroom (known as a "gray room") is used to put on cleanroom clothing. This practice is common in many nuclear power plants, which operate as low-grade inverse pressure cleanrooms, as a whole.
Recirculating vs. one pass cleanrooms
Recirculating cleanrooms return air to the negative pressure plenum via low wall air returns. The air then is pulled by HEPA fan filter units back into the cleanroom. The air is constantly recirculating and by continuously passing through HEPA filtration removing particles from the air each time. Another advantage of this design is that air conditioning can be incorporated.
One pass cleanrooms draw air from outside and pass it through HEPA fan filter units into the cleanroom. The air then leaves through exhaust grills. The advantage of this approach is the lower cost. The disadvantages are comparatively shorter HEPA fan filter life, worse particle counts than a recirculating cleanroom, and that it cannot accommodate air conditioning.
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There are different classifications for aseptic or sterile processing cleanrooms. The Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation Scheme (PIC/S) classifies cleanrooms into four grades (A, B, C, and D) based on their cleanliness level, particularly the concentration of airborne particles and viable microorganisms.
Common materials such as paper, , and Textile made from natural fibers are often excluded because they shed particulates in use.
Particle levels are usually tested using a particle counter and microorganisms detected and counted through . Polymer tools used in cleanrooms must be carefully determined to be chemically compatible with cleanroom processing fluids as well as ensured to generate a low level of particle generation.
When cleaning, only special and are used. Cleaning chemicals used tend to involve sticky elements to trap dust, and may need a second step with light molecular weight solvents to clear. Cleanroom furniture is designed to produce a minimum of particles and is easy to clean.
A cleanroom is as much a process and a meticulous culture to maintain, as it is a space as such.
In assessing cleanroom microorganisms, the typical flora are primarily those associated with human skin (Gram-positive cocci), although microorganisms from other sources such as the environment (Gram-positive rods) and water (Gram-negative rods) are also detected, although in lower number. Common bacterial genera include Micrococcus, Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, and Bacillus, and fungal genera include Aspergillus and Penicillium.
A discrete, light-scattering airborne particle counter is used to determine the concentration of airborne particles, equal to and larger than the specified sizes, at designated sampling locations.
Small numbers refer to ISO 14644-1 standards, which specify the decimal logarithm of the number of particles 0.1 μm or larger permitted per m3 of air. So, for example, an ISO class 5 cleanroom has at most 105 particles/m3.
Both FS 209E and ISO 14644-1 assume log-log relationships between particle size and particle concentration. For that reason, zero particle concentration does not exist. Some classes do not require testing some particle sizes, because the concentration is too low or too high to be practical to test for, but such blanks should not be read as zero.
Because 1 m3 is about 35 ft3, the two standards are mostly equivalent when measuring 0.5 μm particles, although the testing standards differ. Ordinary room air is around class 1,000,000 or ISO 9.
ISO 14644-1 defines the maximum concentration of particles per class and per particle size with the following formula
Where is the maximum concentration of particles in a volume of 1m of airborne particles that are equal to, or larger, than the considered particle size which is rounded to the nearest whole number, using no more than three significant figures, is the ISO class number, is the size of the particle in m and 0.1 is a constant expressed in m. The result for standard particle sizes is expressed in the following table.
Current regulating bodies include ISO, USP 800, US FED STD 209E (previous standard, still used).
BS 5295 Class 1 also requires that the greatest particle present in any sample can not exceed 5 μm. BS 5295 has been superseded, withdrawn since the year 2007 and replaced with "BS EN ISO 14644-6:2007".
In another case, severely immunocompromised patients sometimes have to be held in prolonged isolation from their surroundings, for fear of infection. At the extreme, this necessitates a cleanroom environment. The same is the case for patients carrying airborne infectious diseases, only they are handled at negative, not positive pressure.
Since larger cleanrooms are very sensitive controlled environments upon which multibillion-dollar industries depend, sometimes they are even fitted with numerous seismic base isolation systems to prevent costly equipment malfunction.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Cleanroom Wiki--The Global Society For Contamination Control (GSFCC)
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