Issue

Following the article titled ???New Challenges in Contamination Control??? published in the January issue of CleanRooms magazine, IEST has received positive comments and additional requests for insight into relevant ISO standards applicable to contamination control in controlled environments.

There are three broad categories of wiping products: woven flat wipers, non-woven flat wipers, and swabs. The main advantage of swabs is the variety of shapes and materials in which they are available.

Accepting USP <797>as a robust quality and patient safety regulation is the first step to enforcing it.

I guess it must be about 15 years ago now, when I was the editor of a military electronics publication, that I wrote an editorial opining on Japan’s highly ambitious and targeted competition with the U.S. semiconductor industry.

For anyone who has ever been admitted to a hospital for an emergency, illness, or scheduled procedure, usually the last thing on their mind is exposure to another, potentially more devastating health problem-infection.

In response to consumer demand for smaller, faster, and more capable electronics, semiconductor process designers and chip fabricators have adopted optical lithography processes to increase chip capacity by decreasing circuit linewidths.

Gloveboxes are designed and engineered to provide an enclosed work space for operation under a controlled environment.

A combination of minienvironments, thorough particle and chemical filtration systems, close environmental monitoring, and purging around key lithography steps can give operators control over contamination and improvements in yields.

SEMI, the global industry association serving the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, is hosting its 37th annual SEMICON West Conference and Exhibition from July 16-20.

Each month, Cleanrooms brings you a collection of the latest product innovations in the contamination control industry.

Comfort is important to contamination-control professionals confined to the cleanroom or lab for extended periods of time.

Microtest Laboratories (Agawam, MA) and Texcel Medical (East Longmeadow, MA) recently announced their strategic alliance to provide pharmaceutical manufacturers and biotech companies with outsourcing services for developing the latest combination products-medical devices with pharmaceutical or biologics components-a growing market that is expected to reach approximately $9.5 billion in 2009.

Taking into consideration the statistics on hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), it’s no wonder that the health care industry is looking for simple and cost-effective ways to reduce the number of these infections.

IBM recently announced the first application of a breakthrough self-assembling nanotechnology to conventional chip manufacturing, borrowing a process from nature to build the next-generation computer chips.

Semiconductor wafer fabs tend to be one color, but now the industry wants another-green. At one of two back-to-back meetings held in mid-May in Austin, TX, members of the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI) agreed to draft a green fab standard, one designed expressly for semiconductor manufacturing.

Despite the highly publicized antics, a poorly attended biolab protest may have done more to illustrate the growing acceptance of Biosafety Level 3 and 4 facilities-even in urban areas-than to rile up residents.