Issue

Wastewater evaporator from RGF Environmental; Miniature gripper from Nim-Cor Inc.; Vacuum filter cup from Millipore Corp.; Probe from Electro-Tech Systems Inc....

Particle material transfer; Molecular contamination control system; Detecting base contaminants in gas; Wafer processing...

I can't think of a single cleanroom end-user market that hasn't been effected by some sort of personnel downsizing over the past six to eight months. My first reaction is to avert my eyes from the chilling job-cut headlines when skimming the newswires as I prepare the news for our issues; but I realize it's in my best interest to give the text that follows full attention—for what follows tells the tale of many markets.

Here we are, just a couple of months from the 100th anniversary of the first time Guglielmo Marconi's wireless radio signals were transmitted across the Atlantic Ocean, and that day, December 12th, could possibly go by without many ever knowing.

The cleanrooms industry has made the case that we can use minienvironments to downgrade the cleanliness of our cleanrooms without sacrificing contamination control in the critical places. But this in no way proves that we should do this. The decision to actually do so must invariably follow from a detailed economic analysis—in other words, the benefits must outweigh the costs.

The food industry is aggressively employing new methods to lessen instances of sickness and death by minimizing in-store meat handling, purchasing specially antibacterial-treated equipment and taking extra care when training employees in the federal Hazard and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system.

MOUNT PROSPECT, IL—MIL-STD 1246 is now in the hands of the Working Group 901 of the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST), which at press time was continuing to revise the guidelines for product cleanliness and contamination control requirements.

Chelmsford, MA—In a move that aims to strengthen its foothold in the chip and microelectronics industries, Brooks Automation Inc. has agreed to purchase two companies, a neighboring precisions exhaust controller manufacturer and the e-diagnostics arm of a San Jose-based yield management and process control firm.

EDEN PRAIRE, MN—Operating rooms, by design, have sterile areas, and keeping such sterile fields clean of biocontaminants is a primary concern. But these biologically clean rooms may have a contamination source inside them that many infection control professionals aren't aware of it.

QUINCY, MA—The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) committee 318 recently adopted two protocols for testing non-fire propagating materials used to manufacture cleanroom tools and equipment—Factory Mutual Research 4910 Protocol and Undewriter's Laboratories (UL) 2360.

BOHEMIA, NY—Nearly two years ago, mired in Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, things didn't look so rosy at Clean Room Engineering Inc. After shedding it's previous management and it's sterile packaging division, the re-made company is leaner, financed through operating cash flow and ready to turn a small profit in 2001.

MIDLAND, MI—The Dow Chemical Co., boasting global sales of more than $23 billion in 2000, recently leapt into the critical environments market with the introduction of the INTACTA IC 1000 polyurethane glove that the company touts as having "excellent ESD properties and extremely low extractables".

BERLIN, GERMANY—The maniacal, malevolent masses of anonymous microcosms plague even the cleanest of cleanrooms and leads to symptomatic airborne molecular contamination (AMC)—a constant quagmire that forces engineers and end-users to become particle police on a case to determine how or what infests batches of drugs or renders wafer lots useless.

Structure protects airmen from chemical attack; Millipore expands; ITW relocates facility; Isonics to acquire SOI wafer business...

Over the last few months we've been discussing the various filters commonly used for particle control in cleanrooms. These filters separate entrained particles from a fluid—remove particles from recirculating ambient cleanroom air or from various process fluids used in cleanroom operations.

Containment strategies have become moving targets due to the changing acceptable exposure limits for new compounds. Exposure limits of 10 micrograms were the exception five years ago, but today it is not uncommon for new compounds to have exposure limits in the low nanogram range.

When the new standard EN 1822 "HEPA/ULPA Filters" came into force, it constituted an important step forward for cleanroom technology in Europe. EN 1822's five parts define salient characteristics for HEPA/ULPA filters; classification, performance testing, leak-finding, and collection efficiency determination.

The automation tools used in the support of the manufacturing of wafers have evolved greatly over the past 10 years. What was once a simple loop of track connecting stockers at the head of the bay to manage the work in place (WIP) storage and lot delivery has quickly become one of the key enablers for manufacturing in the 300 mm environment.

The key words for cleanroom retrofitting are time, safety and control. Time is of the essence, safety is always a prime concern, but it's the control of the project that's the most difficult to maintain.

Corporations usually buckle down, postponing projects and limiting expenditures, during times of economic duress. But many industries employing cleanrooms and contamination control technology are doing the exact opposite.

Jonathan Holder is manager of major construction for the microelectronics division of the IBM Corp. (Armonk, NY) and is supervising IBM's retrofit of a large semiconductor cleanroom in East Fishkill, NY. When the plant closed in 1993, it ran a 125-millimeter wafer semiconductor manufacturing process. After renovation is complete in 2002, the 140,000-square-foot cleanroom will manufacture 300 mm, state-of-the-art product—this is hardly a trivial task.