Issue

It's no secret that sales of semiconductor equipment and materials have been declining over the past twelve months.

Have a contamination control paper you'd like to share with the world? As a CleanRooms conference faculty member, you benefit from the prestige and visibility of participating...

BEIJING—With crackdowns on substandard drugs and shoddy pharmaceutical manufacturing well underway, China has launched efforts to clean up its food supply in the wake of mass food poisonings by establishing a monitoring network.

Federal Standard 209, a benchmark the contamination control industry lived and died by for more than 40 years, has been officially cancelled, paving the way for worldwide harmonization promised by new cleanroom protocols from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

SOUTH PORTLAND, ME—National Semiconductor and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have come to an agreement whereby National will pay a cash settlement of $42,000 and agree to develop and install chemical monitoring equipment into its wet benches.

NEW YORK—Cleanroom managers from all industries have a new resource to help train new and existing employees with the November release of William "Bill" Whyte's Cleanroom Technology—Fundamentals of Design, Testing and Operation...

WILMINGTON, DE—The DuPont Co. has once again allied with more cleanroom consumables and garment manufacturers, steadfastly securing market presence.

Keeping the food supply safe and pharmaceuticals sterile and effective are underlying goals in the record $1.4-billion budget the House recently provided for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

In the post-anthrax world, the most seemingly innocent of items—a letter from a school—can actually be deadly. In response to this changed reality, industry alliances have been created in this new battle against terrorism.

HSINCHU, TAIWAN—Just months after completing its study on whether a high-speed train would affect its chip production and fab construction, officials from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) report there will be no negative impact.

BETHESDA, MD—A task force from the Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) has submitted a draft of "change tables" to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for consideration in developing the first-ever post approval change (PAC) guidance for sterile products.

Today, the environment that our tools sit in is just as important as the tools themselves. Yet, every day I meet with senior management, facility managers and end users that hold onto that mode of thinking.

I read with interest the article "VHP takes its place in room decontamination" (CleanRooms, November, 2001), but would like to point out some misconceptions that it perpetuates. The most important of which is that condensation can be avoided. If it cannot be avoided then the process cannot be described as "dry."

Culturing micro-organisms; Air filter; Clean-air workstation; Heat recovery ventilator...

Remember Harold: The slot-machine cranking guy who transformed an isolator into a machine that can receive, inspect and electronically transmit mail without anyone ever having to touch it?

When the issue of FDA compliance is bandied around a table, it's impossible to steer clear of the argument that a company's "culture" starts at the top and always trickles down.

Cleanrooms provide ideal environments for chip and overall product health; but what about the health of the people inside? The concentrations of particle contaminants are far lower inside cleanrooms than in the outside ambient air.

ISO 14644-1 - TITLE: Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments. Part 1: Classes of Air Cleanliness.

If it's not a corollary to Moore's Law, it should be: Larger wafers mean heavier processing equipment. A lithography machine that five years ago weighed three tons today tops the scale at more than eight tons. Stepper machines have gone from less than one thousand pounds (450 kg) to 7,000 pounds (3,150 kg) in recent years.

The principles of current good manufacturing practices (cGMPs) and quality assurance demand that particle and microbiological contamination levels within any critical area be kept to a minimum to prevent the contamination from corrupting the product. Two major sources of viable and non-viable particle contamination entering critical environments originate from feet and wheels.

Wiping cloths or wipers are used extensively in a range of industrial, commercial and household processes. Through thoughtful product design, the humble wiper can be employed effectively in both critical and non-critical cleaning processes.

It's the heart and soul of all air-filtration systems: the material of the filter itself. And like the rest of the cleanroom industry, it's changing.

When it comes to the slumping semiconductor industry, MEMS the word. And where there are MEMS, short for micro electro-mechanical systems, there are cleanrooms.

If you're preparing for a cleanroom project, you must plan ahead, plan well and execute your plan. This basic approach has proven effective time and again, and the schedule is always agressive.

Modular/prefabricated cleanrooms isolate the process, whether it be manufacturing or laboratory related, from outside contamination. In addition to cleanliness, users can often control temperature and humidity, thereby ensuring the best possible results within the cleanroom.

ICP spectrometer by Spectro Analytical Instruments; Towel by Cortec Corp.; Isolation system by AAF International; XRF analysis by Spectro Analytical Instruments Inc. ...