Feb. 15, 2008 – The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) has published a newly revised “recommended practice” addressing characterization of organic compounds outgassed from materials or components exposed to air or gases in cleanrooms and other controlled environments.

“IEST-RP-CC031.2: Method for Characterizing Outgassed Organic Compounds from Cleanroom Materials and Components” targets industries where production yields can be impacted by gaseous organic contamination, i.e. volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs). In the semiconductor industry, this means deposition of outgassed compounds on hardware, products, and wafer surfaces. (It’s also a significant problem in the aerospace industry, where molecular contamination can “significantly degrade spacecraft performance goals and hasten end-of-life projections,” the IEST says, in a statement.)

The IEST statement includes a semiquantitative determination and a qualitative identification of a large range of compounds. The method is designed to screen primarily cleanroom materials, but the IEST notes it can also be applied to materials used in other controlled environments for identification of outgassed compounds detectable by dynamic headspace gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).