In the Next Ten Years…
“Human operators will not have to touch the work in process. The wafers will be moved from tool to tool and bay to bay by a full-factory automation system. Yield will stay high, worker injuries will decrease, and equipment utilization should increase even further. Curiously, less of the fab will be a `cleanroom`, and in fact may even be a lights-out facility. It`s a good thing that there won`t be any carts to trip over.”
Mitchell Weiss
PRI Automation
Billerica, MA
“ISO global cleanroom standards will be widely adopted and utilized; new ISO Class 1 and ISO Class 2 criteria will be widely applied, particularly in microelectronic areas; molecular contamination will be a major concern; there will be a broader application of clean manufacturing technology to answer higher demands for quality; there will be little change in the cost of clean space; more IES Recommended Practices will be initiated to address industry specific concerns; cleanroom technology will experience a broader market base; there will be more need for specialized training of people who work in controlled environments.”
Richard A. Matthews
Filtration Technology Inc.
Greensboro, NC
“The 1997 `Clean Air` regulations for control of fine particles will be implemented. This will create a great demand for cost effective technology for particulate control. This will take several years to implement but will result in a cleaner environment and reduced long term health cost.”
Hank Rahe
Contain-Tech
Indianapolis, IN
“I envisage a move from clean room designed in a minienvironment to a capsule environment, whereby the clean
room station can be installed, relocated, modified and serviced `instantaneously`.”
Jeremy Chia
Utopia-Aire Pte Ltd.
Singapore
“The number of cleanrooms in use in a remarkable variety of processes will grow exponentially. Medical device manufacturing and biotechnology will lead in growth with food processing and other consumer related activities second. Seventy years ago, manufacturers began providing air conditioning and other environmental improvements to manufacturing processes. Today, we are in the `Age of Clean`.”
John Potter
CRP
Ronkonkoma, NY
“The assurance of sterility (freedom from microbial contamination) will approach that of terminally sterilized pharmaceutical and biological products. The importance of this development has increased greatly because of the marketing of biological products derived from biotechnology. Most, if not all, of these products must be prepared aseptically because they cannot endure the rigors of terminal sterilization and retain their effectiveness.”
Kenneth E. Avis, D. Sc.
University of Tennessee, College of Pharmacy
“I think that the recent developments with NASA and the Mars mission will lead to more miniaturization in order to reduce the expense of these types of operations. With miniaturization, the need for contamination control is even more important – therefore even more cleanroom or isolator usage.”
Elaine Kopis
Steris Calgon Vestal St. Louis, MO
“First off, contamination control has changed from an enhancing technology to an enabling technology. New industries are requiring clean room or contamination control techniques in huge numbers every year. Refinements and new technology to measure and control contamination are springing up regularly. Issues such as molecular contamination and low frequency noise contamination will come into focus in the next few years, and unless controlled, may be limiting factors. One thing for sure, the science of contamination control will become much more sophisticated, will require special courses at universities and will enable a broad-band of industries to succeed.”
Richard S. Dryden
Dryden Engineering Co.
Fremont, CA
“We need reliable, meaningful and accurate test methodology for determining cleanliness of garments and characteristics of fabrics. Also, the very important notion that users MUST audit or, at the very least, site visit their cleanroom laundries, garment manufacturers, fabric mills and general suppliers of sensitive contamination control products and services. Where contamination control is obviously very important, it`s time that vendors are truly held to the fire.”
Chuck Berndt
C.W. Berndt Associates
Highland Park, IL
“Contamination control will become more widely used and as a result, the applications of contamination control will be more flexible and hybrid in nature. Much like the SMIF technology, which spun off minienvironments, many more ideas will be developed to reduce costs and increase flexibility. One area to watch for reducing energy costs is the development of ionization technology to eliminate particulates. This could very well replace the HEPA and ULPA filters and greatly reduce the cost of moving clean air through production and research spaces.”
Thomas E. Hansz
Facility Planning & Resources
Pittsburgh, PA
“The future will bring an even more intense scrutiny of both known and yet-to-be-discovered contaminants as device densities continue to rapidly increase. The control of these contaminants will become paramount in manufacturing processes as a means to achieve both yield and reliability.”
Steven Paley
The Texwipe Co.
Upper Saddle River, NJ