There are distinct differences in the basic design criteria between semiconductor and biopharma cleanrooms — starting with the floors, ceilings, and walls.

As the CEO of a cleanroom room design/build company, a turnkey service provider for the life science industries, I’m frequently asked, “So, how’d you get into this?” And the answer is always the same — a long-winded monologue on how I started my career in the mid-1990s working for a subcontractor in Silicon Valley and how, due to a shift in capital expenditures, I was motivated to make a move away from semiconductor and focus instead on biopharmaceutical and health care. The not-so-subtle theme of follow the money always raises eyebrows and gets the slow but affirmative nod of approval, but what seems to get lost in translation are the reasons why such a move was necessary; that is, there are distinct differences in the basic design criteria between semiconductor and biopharma which make the engineering and construction of their cleanroom environments a mutually exclusive process.

For years, I witnessed cleanroom vendors and contractors grossly cannibalize semiconductor products in unsuccessful attempts at creating acceptable life science systems. It’s fair to say that the lack of understanding by professionals on all sides of both industries — designers, manufacturers, contractors, and end users — have slowed the process of innovation. It has resulted in many companies accepting products that don’t perform to the highest standards which have ultimately increased costs and slowed production.

The most commonly understood element of their incompatibility is in the contrasting nature of their exposed surface materials — the floors, walls, and ceilings. This is due to the obvious fact that the performance criteria of the architectural surfaces in a semiconductor facility are completely opposite to those in a life science laboratory. A somewhat typical semiconductor facility will have a combination of raised access floors with perforated tiles to achieve laminar flow; a modular (demountable/non-progressive) aluminum-based cleanroom wall system with electro-static dissipative properties; and any number of rod-hung aluminumbased ceiling systems, either stick-built or pre-fabricated plenum modules. In contrast, the prototypical life science laboratory has a single purpose: to eliminate the potential of microbial contamination of the end product. And therefore, the architecture itself is strikingly different from its semiconductor counterpart, as it’s designed to perform in a wash-down setting. The flooring in a life science environment is normally a resinous type with trowel coves for ease of cleaning; the walls tend to be of a seamless make-up, either epoxy paint or welded PVC laminate; and the ceilings are constructed as part of the same seamless transition into the walls, yet, in most cases, they have the added “walk-on” feature which allows serviceability and maintenance from the interstitial side without compromising batch production.