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- #96Our Quality Management team has determined that we need to convert from a controlled environment to a cleanroom environment. Where can I find information to design and build a cleanroom?
The IEST recommended practice IEST-RP-CC 012.2, as well as ISO 14644-4, are documents that should be reviewed prior to the design and building of a cleanroom.
- #95Operator Interface Systems are Becoming More User-friendly
In the past, ergonomics have not been a prime consideration for industrial designs. But, when industrial engineers and designers omit ergonomics from their plans, they compromise the safe and efficient operation of equipment in controlled environments, which leads to injuries, equipment damage, and costly retrofits.
- #94Identifying Genus and Species of the organisms—why is it important?
The identification of bacteria and fungi isolated from controlled environments ranging from Class 100,000 to sterility suits of Class 100 or less is accomplished biochemically by methods briefly set forth in USP and in greater detail by other methods.
- #93Achieving True EH&S in Controlled Environments
Achieving True EH&S in Controlled Environments Beyond the perennial concerns of profitability and competitive advantage, life science organizations have a number of responsibilities to carefully consider each day. Particularly in the area of environmental health and safety (EH&S), organizations must ensure the safety of their workers and test subjects, protect the community and environment.
- #92Isolation and Identification of Bacteria:
Identifying Genus and Species of the organism—why is it important? The identification of bacteria and fungi isolated from controlled environments ranging from class 100,000 to sterility suits of class 100 or less is important for seven reasons…
- #91Effective Use of Alcohol Hand Sanitizers
Eliminating the risk of cross-contamination in pharmaceutical production areas, R&D labs, cleanrooms, and support areas includes effective methods for hand sanitization.
- #90Learn How to Make Lean Manufacturing Work for You
Originated by Taiichi Ohno to analyze processes within the Toyota Production System, Lean principles have evolved into a development philosophy that strives to identify and eliminate waste by concentrating on what is valuable to the customer.
- #90Maintaining Nano-safety
Simply stated, nanotechnology is a system of innovative methods to control and manipulate matter at near atomic scale to produce new materials, structures, and devices. Manufacturers across the board are embracing the technology, coined nanomanufacturing, and the process is creeping up everywhere.
- #90Choosing a Green Fume Exhaust System
Facility and purchasing managers in the semiconductor industry have an excellent opportunity to leverage their technical knowledge, evaluate and prioritize initiatives, and pursue their final selection of a fume exhaust duct system that promotes and produces green rewards.
- #90Exhausting Your Options
Semiconductor industry facilities and purchasing managers who are key decision makers for systems and materials selection need to rethink and broaden their approach in selecting, specifying, and purchasing an industrial fume exhaust duct system.
- #89Cleanroom Consumable Cleanliness
How do I determine if the cleanroom consumable product purchased will meet the cleanliness requirements of our cleanroom operations?
- #89Capture-Only Technology
With hundreds of choices and grades, selecting the most cost-effective wipe can be tricky. The most obvious criteria is the absorbency of the wipe. But, it is not well understood that absorbency varies by the contamination. Some wipes will not absorb water; others are better with solvents and lacquers.
- #88Capture-Only Technology
Almost all current filtration technologies are evaluated on the concept of “capture” rate, measuring the amount of particulates captured on the first pass through the filtration device. The higher the efficiency of a filtration device, the greater the number of particles captured. HEPA filters have a capture rate of 99.97 percent. HEPA and other high-end filters use dense filter media to capture particles physically; the denser the filter media, the more particles captured.
- #87Fact: All Humidity Sensors Drift
It’s an immutable law of RH measurement; relative humidity sensors drift. They do so for the simple reason that they are “air breathers.”
- #86The Challenge of Modeling Diffusers
Computation fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling provides the ability to accurately model air flow and heat transfer within a building, enabling heating and cooling systems to be optimized in the form of a software prototype without the expense and time involved in making changes to the actual building.
- #85Resistant Properties of PVDF Foams and Polymers
Today’s cleanroom environments in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor markets require the highest level of material performance across a broad spectrum of requirements. New, sophisticated medicines are made using advanced manufacturing technologies and materials. High technology cleanroom environments often contain polymeric sheets, coatings, wall coverings, and polymeric foam for insulation. These are used to create lightweight structures, walls, partitions, ceilings, and pipe and ducting insulation.
- #84When Should Cleanroom Garments be Replaced?
Some cleanroom industries rely on a subjective, aesthetic evaluation of the cleanroom garment or number of launder cycles for replacement. Most cleanroom garment laundries have validated their processes for at least 100 launder cycles for the cleanroom garments they supply to the cleanroom industry. However, I recommend an objective testing of the cleanroom garment and fabric as well as establishing the efficacy of particle entrapment, the lack of particle shedding, and ESD efficacy as the criteria for replacement.
- #83Should Your Facility be using Overshoes?
The steel toecap safety overshoe has been around for a long time. Its origins lie in the marriage between the venerable rubber galosh and a steel toecap similar to those used in many of today’s safety boots. However, the safety overshoe hadn’t evolved much before a slate of revisions entered the market recently.
- #82Solving Semiconductor Leveling Problems
In order for semiconductor process equipment to operate efficiently, very precise leveling standards are needed for all wafer process and transfer locations. However, when asked about the leveling standard at their fab, most process or equipment maintenance engineers responded, “We have no leveling standards.”
- #81Everything Vibrates
Because of traffic, machinery, HVAC systems, weather, and natural frequency, everything vibrates. In an average building, approximately 70–75% of the vibrations are vertical. In laboratories, vibrations don’t have to be obvious for performance to suffer. Most vibrations are not even noticeable to a building’s occupants, but many cannot be tolerated by equipment used in research, precision manufacturing, inspection, and quality control.
- #80Vibration Isolation Workstation Basics
Vibration isolation workstations and related equipment are used in cleanrooms around the world to improve productivity for research and other high-precision work such as manufacturing semiconductors and optics.
- #79What Your Cleanroom Isolation Materials Need To Do
s
The need for a proper insulation inside cleanrooms remained unanswered for decades. Ideally, cleanroom insulation should…
- #78Microbial Basics
The risk of microbial contamination is confirmed by the consistent number of recalls ordered by the FDA due to microbial contamination. From 1991 to 1998, for example, the FDA ordered 46 such recalls, an average of 6 per year.
- #77How Not to Behave in a Cleanroom
Meticulous hiring practices for cleanroom personnel include screening potential operators for physical characteristics such as: smoker hiring policy, overweight or obese personnel, facial hair, sensitivity to heat, cold and humidity, and seasonal allergies including skin allergies. Also, when evaluating personal skills and language skills, the human resources department must also evaluate potential cleanroom candidates for mental characteristics such as claustrophobia.
- #76Basic Cleanroom Protocol, Part 1
Most basic protocol programs for cleanrooms are based on the IEST recommended practices for contamination control and the ISO 14644 series of international standards for cleanrooms and associated controlled environments. The focus of any protocol program is to protect the integrity of the cleanroom and the products and processes in the cleanroom from the people working in the cleanroom.
- #75How to Ensure Document Security
It is generally believed in the life science world that all regulatory and compliance issues go away when a document management system is implemented, preferably the most expensive system with untold rewards. And why should this misconception not be believed? The regulatory bodies almost promote this idea.
- #74Powder Metallurgy Methodology
Powder metallurgy (PM) is an industrial method for obtaining metal or metal-like powders, molding semifinished goods from powders, and manufacturing particles from them by a thermal process, called sintering. Because of the similarities between methods for ceramic (shaping – thermal treatment) and PM (molding – sintering) production, the end bodies produced by PM are also called metalloceramics.
- #73Advantages of Closed Vial Technology
The closed vial technology is based on a vial that is provided clean and sterile with the stopper in place. Thanks to such container design, the most complex filling steps of classical open vials, such as vial washing, stopper washing, and hot air tunnel sterilization, are eliminated. The filling is done by means of a needle that pierces the stopper and dispenses the liquid. After needle withdrawal, the puncture trace is immediately resealed with a laser to restore closure integrity.
- #72Validating the Cleaning Process
Validating the cleaning process to internal standards, customer standards, and industry standards is important; validation tests may be conducted based on discussions with regulatory personnel. Validating the cleaning process can involve the process, the process chemicals, and the product or component surfaces. Certain analytical techniques are commonly used.
- #71 The Cleaning Process-Sterilizing Vs. Cleaning
Sterilizing and disinfection are not the same as cleaning. A device may be sterile. A sterile device may be left in an airtight container and remain sterile for years, perhaps decades. However, if the device is not clean, it can still negatively impact the host.
- #70 Control Strategies for Fungal Contamination in Cleanrooms
Pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device clean-rooms today are faced with the increasing prevalence of molds that can lead to environmental monitoring excursions. Molds, such as Aspergillus, have come from many sources in the cleanroom, such as bags, boxes, markers, intervention equipment, and cart wheels. These occurrences seem to be more prevalent.
- #69 Understanding the VDmax Method
How are cleanroom garments validated as sterile for use in an aseptic cleanroom using the VDmax method?
- #68 Causes of Microbial-Induced Corrosion
While microbial-induced corrosion (MIC) does not produce a unique type of corrosion, understanding the dynamics of microbes is a key to avoiding a problem. Microbes thrive under the same conditions as present in many aqueous cleaning systems. They need heat and a food source to provide energy, moisture, and sometimes oxygen.
- #67 Sorbency and Cleanliness: Bread and Butter Wiper Metrics
Perhaps the most commonly used metrics to compare consumables are sorbency and cleanliness. Sorbency, or the ability of a textile product to wick and hold liquid, can be a useful metric for cleanroom applications that may involve large liquid spills. An engineered cleanroom wiper removes liquid spills quickly and efficiently; one engineered cleanroom wiper can do the job of multiple wipers with inferior sorbency.
- #66 Environmental Monitoring of Particle Counts is Easy
The manufacture of pharmaceutical and biotechnology products requires that the appropriate level of quality be designed and constructed into the facility and systems that support the production process. Given that the FDA’s compliance focus, as a result of 483 observations and warning letters, is on “inadequate facility design” and “environmental and personnel monitoring,” one can only conclude that the skill level, training, and attitude of the personnel involved were inadequate in the cases cited with respect to the obvious requirement to minimize particulate, microbial, and pyrogen contamination.
- #65 Understanding Cleanroom Apparel Sterilization
Sterilization is a process that is intended to destroy viable forms of microbial life including bacteria, molds, yeasts, viruses, protozoa, and algae (including bacterial spores) to an acceptable sterility assurance level (SAL). SALs were first used in the food canning industry and refer to the degree to which an item is expected to be non-sterile after exposure to a sterilization process. While we use phrases like “terminal sterilization,” we must remember that sterilization is a matter of degree or probability.
- #64 Reducing Cost and Complexity of Managed Cleanrooms
With more options at your disposal, what drives the system choice? Where FFU systems were once prohibitive or unavailable, small out-of-the-box solutions bring cost and complexity down significantly so that smart systems can be deployed in the smallest of systems and still be cost-effective.
- #63 How UV Kills Microorganisms
The lethal effects of UV towards microorganisms were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century and the first practical application of UV was in the disinfection of water. This remains the use to which UV is most commonly associated today and it is true to say that the technology for treating water can be thought of as relatively well accepted in the food and other industries.
- #62 What is UV?
UV forms part of the electromagnetic spectrum and the UV wavelength range is from about 10 to 400 nm, placing it between X-rays and the visible part of the spectrum. Though frequently referred to as “non-ionizing radiation,” the shortest ultraviolet wavelengths do bring about some ionization. The UV portion of the spectrum has been sub-divided for convenience.
- #61 How To Succeed In The Search For Nothing: Effective Swabbing Techniques For Cleaning Validation
Assuming the surface is free of visible residue (i.e., that the cleaning stage is done), the challenge is now to sample that surface in a reproducible manner so that any (invisible) residues, present in extremely small amounts, are collected and delivered to the instrument for measurement.
- #60 Green on a Budget
There exists a notion that being “green” means spending “green.” Certainly this has proven to be the case in early efforts at attaining awards. Not every project has a good shot at winning an award. Not every owner has the patience to seek an award. Not every architect, engineer, or constructor has the determination to jump through the appropriate hoops to earn certification. Still, as time goes on, more and more architects, engineers, and constructors see a value in building green.
- #60 Is This a Convenient Time to Clean?
Asking if it’s a convenient time to clean is equivalent to asking: “Is this a convenient time to extract your impacted molars”? The simple answer is “No.” There’s never a convenient time to clean (or remove impacted molars).
- #59 Selecting The Right Agent For Sterilization
Choosing the right sterilizing/decontaminating agent for your cleanroom can be both an easy task and a daunting choice.
- #58 Drying Product in a Cleanroom Environment
Drying is often neglected or under-estimated when planning contamination control strategies or cleaning processes. Adding drying to an established process incurs costs and complexities that could be avoided with appropriate up-front planning.
- #57 Water – The Universal Solvent
In its purest form, water is one of the most aggressive solvents known and will dissolve a material until the solution reaches saturation. Pure water is also a critical ingredient in many business ventures; manufacturing, power generation, health care, pharmaceuticals, research, food production and processing, etc. Each of these business sectors has a different but specific use for high purity water. Water purity is relative to its use.
- #56 Specifying an AMC Control System
Manufacturers have become much more sophisticated in their knowledge and understanding of Airborne Molecular Contamination (AMC) and its effects in the cleanroom. They have a better general understanding of where AMC control should be applied and why, and as their knowledge of AMCrelated problems have increased, so too have their expectations for an AMC control system.
- #55 Reducing Surface Contamination on Wafers
The surface contamination of wafers, especially by particle contaminants, has been one of the major problems in the semiconductor industry since its inception. The yield on fully processed silicon wafers is inversely related to the defect density of the wafers.
- #54 Preventing Cross-Contamination
Our company currently operates ISO Class 7 and 8 non-sterile cleanrooms and a sterile ISO Class 5 cleanroom that are interconnected by unclassified corridors. We currently don disposable coveralls over street clothes prior to entering and working in the ISO Class 7 and 8 cleanrooms. What improvements can we make to increase our level of contamination control? What can we do to prevent cross-contamination between the two cleanroom areas?
- #53 Choosing The Right Panel Material For Your Modular Cleanroom
Deciding whether your cleanroom should be modular instead of drywall is not the only decision a project team has to make when considering a cleanroom. In most cases, the choice of panels is not as clear cut as once was the norm.
- #52 Dressing For Cleanroom Success: Cutting Costs In Cleanroom Apparel
Diligently re-bidding cleanroom laundry service isn’t the only thing that you can do to manage cleanroom garment costs.
- #51 Think Small
To meet cleanliness specifications, the first thought is frequently "Build it in a Cleanroom." However, not every critical component need be processed in a large, tightly specified cleanroom by gowned personnel.
- #50 Planning For Disaster
I am a production supervisor working in an ISO Class 7 cleanroom in Florida. Our cleanroom has not been affected by the hurricanes in Florida in the past but I have been assigned to write a disaster plan for the clean-room. How does one prepare, respond, and recover a cleanroom operation from a natural disaster?
- #49 Building A Clean Research Laboratory, Part 2
Last week, we discussed some of the factors
that need to be taken into account when building a clean research
laboratory. This week, we’ll see some more.
- #48 Building a Clean Research Laboratory
When building a research lab, there are many questions to be answered: How clean does it need to be? If you are working on a fixed-cost basis such as a grant, what do you need to know to be adequately able to support the research, yet not overbuild?
- #47 How To Minimize Contamination When Transferring Items Into Hospital Cleanrooms
Materials brought in and out of controlled environments is a major source of contamination. There are ways to reduce the initial bioburden on items passed into the cleanroom, so that contamination is minimized.
- #46 Navigating the Forest of Standards
Standards should be considered in context. Technical standards specify such attributes as product characteristics, performance, safety profile, test methods, or terminology.
- #45 Controlling Bacteria in Industrial Applications
The requirements to control bacteria in industrial applications where water suspensions and solutions are used are essential. Of special concern is when solids are used in a process and are in a suspension of particles 0.5µl and finer.
- #44 Advantages of Sterile Pre-Wetted Wipers
Pre-wetted wipers are sterilized by gamma irradiation to a probability of non-sterility (Sterility Assurance Level) of 10-6. This insures that only one wiper out of a million would not be sterile.
- #43 Finding the Ideal Way to Calibrate Your Pressure Sensor
Several challenges face those responsible for calibrating pressure sensors for critical air environments, including pharmaceutical plants. Pressurization equipment requires highly accurate calibrations to certify that pressure sensors are working correctly.
- #42 Shouldn’t Training and Gowning Solve Everything?
The personnel understand how a cleanroom works. Everybody knows that there are things from the outside environment that need to stay outside of the cleanroom. The staff is qualified and capable of donning gowning apparel. This should take care of all of the contamination, right?
- #41 Doors Make the Difference
Whether it’s an ISO class 8 or ISO class 5 cleanroom, manufacturers in pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, medical device, electronic, and other critical manufacturing industries require their cleanrooms to be simultaneously functional, flexible, economical, practical, and of course, clean.
- #40 Apparel System Selection For Phamaceutical Cleanrooms, Part 2
There are two basic types of systems; single-use and multiple-wear, each with a long history of use. Since cleanroom garments are not regulated, it is important that the garment user exercise effective controls in the selection and ongoing monitoring of a sterile garment supplier.
- #39 Apparel System Selection For Phamaceutical Cleanrooms, Part 1
One of the most important decisions facing any manufacturer of sterile fill pharmaceutical products is the selection of the garment system that will be utilized to support both initial validation and ongoing production.
- #38 ESD Considerations for Cleanrooms
As electrostatic discharge (ESD) thresholds increase, knowledge of ESD standards and control in cleanrooms is a major concern in both microelectronics and medical device manufacturing
- #37 ISO Certification Demystified
ISO 9001:2000 can be viewed as a general quality standard that is applicable to virtually any industry. It has been used for companies ranging from semiconductor manufacturers to home construction companies and retail automobile dealerships.
- #36 Five Things To Look For In A Medical Packaging Vendor
No matter what type of device a medical company might manufacture, chances are that the product will need to be packaged. Five points can guide medical device manufacturers towards the packaging company that is right for them.
- #35 Benefits and Drawbacks of Sieve Impactors
There are several types of sieve impactors; one-stage impactors have only one perforated plate set in front of an agar plate, while stacked sieve samplers can have up to six stages of perforated plates and agar plates.
- #34 Proper Con-Duct
During the past ten years, a handful of semiconductor companies have suffered crippling fires. A fire would start in a process tool, such as a wet bench, and then be drawn into the fume exhaust system. The fume exhaust system was typically made of combustible material and devoid of internal automatic sprinkler protection. As a result, the fire would spread rapidly throughout the ductwork system all the way to the scrubbers.
- #33 Chromatography Basics
Chromatography is a powerful device for separating compounds, allowing easier identification. In chromatography, compounds are separated by their relative affinity between a stationary phase and a mobile phase.
- #32 Setting Expectations for your Laundry Provider
Experienced laundry program managers focus on the areas that they can manage most effectively. They understand that their laundry partner is only part of the solution and don't waste time trying to get a laundry to provide solutions that are beyond its competencies
- #31 AMC Basics
Airborne molecular contamination (AMC) is airborne non-particulate chemical contamination that has a detrimental effect on a product or a process.
- #30 Disinfecting Against Microorganisms
The chemicals most widely used in disinfectant formulations attack microorganisms in both broad and specific ways.
- #29 Making Your Cleanroom Garment Program Work For You
An effective cleanroom garment program is a vital component of any successful cleanroom operation, but it can often seem like a necessary evil; an expense item that seems to be forever trending upwards over budget.
- #28 Selecting Appropriate Cleanroom Seating
Should high-tech seating be evaluated for both its ergonomic values and its merits in controlling contamination?
- #27 FFUs For You
Cleanroom HVAC systems, especially those requiring fan filter units (FFU) for recirculating air, typically account for a large portion of energy use in cleanrooms.
- #26 IMS Basics
Ion Mobility Spectroscopy (IMS) has gained widespread acceptance in many applications for detecting and identifying contaminant molecules.
- #25 Pluses and Minuses of Vented Enclosures
Task-specific vented safety enclosures are safety containment devices that provide enclosed work areas where the handling of potentially hazardous substances can be performed with minimal risk to users and also provide product protection.
- #24 Choosing a Hazard Rating System
Technologists created hazard rating systems (HRS) because they believed the needs of those in which they have an interest weren’t being met by the existing systems. HRS’ should effectively describe all hazards, allow comparison among chemicals, propose protection schemes, and be incredibly easy to understand and communicate.
- #23 Don’t Let Power Failure Stop You
Power failure, by definition, is a total loss of utility power. Utility power losses are caused by numerous events including lightning strikes, downed power lines, transformer malfunctions, over demands on the grid, accidents, weather anomalies, and natural disasters.
- #22 When to Use Alcohol as a Disinfectant
It has been known for many years that alcohol is an effective disinfectant; studies have shown that it is a better disinfectant when it is neither too weak nor too concentrated. Disinfectant efficacy is optimal at concentrations between 50% and 80%. Many institutions use 70% alcohol blends as standard.
- #21 The Expanded Application of Aseptic Processing
Aseptic processing is a means of handling components, materials, and equipment in such a manner that foreign microbials and endotoxins (a pyrogenic product of microbial physiology) that exceed pre-determined acceptable levels are not introduced to the product stream.
- #20 How Surface Active Agents Work
A Surface Active Agent can be described as a substance that can modify the surface properties of liquids or solids. In cleaning applications, these agents work at the boundary layer between soil and solvent.
- #19 Basics of Lean Construction
The theory of lean construction is that projects are temporary production systems linked to multiple, enduring production systems, from which the project is supplied materials, information, and resources. Every production system integrates designing and making a product. Project management is understood in terms of design, operating, and improving production systems.
- #18 Bigger Isn't Always Better
In filtration, traditional thinking holds that more filter equals better filtration. This simply isn’t true anymore. While PTFE and PVDF membranes have been the material of choice for chemical applications, there are a variety of alternative filtration materials today, such as ultra high molecular weight polyethylene (PE) and polysulfone (PS), which make different filter sizes and shapes possible.
- #17 The Benefits of Disposable Processing Systems
The elimination of cleaning and cleaning validation is a significant benefit of disposable processing. Cleaning process equipment consumes time and valuable operator resources. Cleaning chemicals require suitable handling systems for the delivery and disposal of the fluids. Care must also be taken to use these chemicals in the appropriate concentrations to ensure that they perform their specified function.
- #16 How to Maintain Productivity Without Power
The usage of Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) has been employed for the past 3 or 4 decades but its common usage is quite recent. Traditionally, UPS were used to ensure power to critical systems, in times of a power outage, and the continual output of conditioned power to critical devices and applications that could not withstand power fluctuations of voltage and current.
- #15 DP Synthesis for Secondary Calibration
Generating accurate, low differential pressures for the purpose of secondary calibration requires both highly accurate measurement and exacting control.With the appropriate A/D certainty, auto zero, and signal processing techniques, reliable low-pressure measurement with accuracies in the order of 0.05% are obtainable. Combined with a balanced differential piston array, and actuated via a linear drive stepping servo, precise microprocessor synthesis of differential reference pressures is possible.
- #14 Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) Detectors for Real Time AMC Detection
Airborne Molecular Contamination (AMC) arises from unwanted, gas-phase materials deposited on a surface through the process of molecular migration. As cleanliness standards become more stringent, it becomes increasingly important to rapidly detect unanticipated contamination. AMC may be monitored through witness samples, through direct or extractive measurement of the product itself, or through air sampling. One method is a Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) device.
- #13 Fab Facts
Hazards associated with the semiconductor industry are related to the materials used in the construction of cleanrooms or buildings and the process tools, as well as the chemicals used in the manufacturing process.
- #12 How to Use the RCA Cleaning Method
Sure, it requires significant quantities of water and chemicals. It is only gradually being replaced by technologies which limit that use. But the RCA cleaning method (which, unlike other particle removal schemes, operates without sonics), is an excellent illustration of a functional approach to solving cleaning problems because it does the right tasks in the right order.
- #11 Building? How Will you Afford it?
Just as buying a home is one of the most important decisions an individual may make, building a clean room may be one of the most important decisions a corporation makes, particularly if that corporation is a small to mid-size company with potential cash flow problems.
- #10 Controlling Particles--From Start to Finish
Assuring the cleanliness of incoming parts, equipment, and supplies begins at the receiving dock. Packing and shipping containers have gathered dust throughout their journey in cargo vans and warehouses and are usually made of particulate or fibrous materials. They should not be delivered directly to the point of use as received. It is important to have a buffer zone between the receiving area and point of use to permit breakdown and removal of incoming packages so they won't contaminate clean areas.
- #9 Classifying AMC
The term airborne molecular contamination (AMC) covers a wide range of chemical contaminants that can be present in cleanroom air. AMC can be in the form of gases, vapors, or aerosols and their chemical nature can be organic or inorganic. AMC includes acids, bases, condensables, organic chemicals, polymer additives, and organometallic compounds. AMC can be detrimental to many processes and products and also can represent considerable health hazards to personnel.
- #8 How Clean Does Clean Packaging Need to be?
There are many issues related to choosing a packaging format that matches the requirements of your products. Ignore them if you wish, but do so at your peril. Some companies produce high quality products, only to encounter contamination difficulties by failing to properly incorporate the protection of that product into their process. The result; embarrassment, delays, confusion, costs, and lost customers.
- #7 Why clean the room? It’s a cleanroom, isn’t it?
Owners and operators often assume that because their cleanrooms were equipped with state-of-the-art air filtration systems and other safeguards, normal cleaning procedures are optional or even unnecessary.
- #6 Preventing Contamination From the Ground Up
Despite the great cost and effort involved in cleanroom manufacturing, a major threat to a successful operation, foot and wheelborne contamination, is very often not addressed or given low priority in planning and design. Practical experience and industry studies have proven feet and wheels are the single major source of contamination transferred into the cleanroom, accounting for over 80% of the contamination entering the critical environment.
- #5 Prevent Human Contamination in the Cleanroom
There are many possible sources of contamination of the cleanroom environment. Equipment, structures, and surfaces can generate particles through friction, heat, exhaust, outgassing, and static electricity. Of the many elements of cleanroom operations and processes, humans are the easiest to control, yet contribute the most contamination.
- #4 How to Measure Thin Films
Thin films can be essential or detrimental. Semiconductor devices consist of a series of essential thin films, but a residue of the wrong film can turn your product into an expensive ornament. With biological devices and implants, films are usually considered to be contaminants, but there can be a beneficial side to a film on a biomedical device.
- #3 How to Protect Your Wet Bench from Fire Damage
Factory Mutual (now FM Global) has estimated that 1 in 10 fab locations suffer a fire loss annually. In comparison, this figure was estimated to be as low as 1 in 100 in other industrial locations. This large loss equation led to sweeping changes in industry norms and perceptions when specifying or constructing materials for wet bench efficiency and safety.
- #2 What You Need to Know About Cleanroom Dryers
Drying time will decrease due to many factors and there are many options available for cleanroom dryers.
- #1 What You Need to Know About Cleanroom Washers/Extractors
Early cleanroom laundries used pass-through washers designed for hospitals. Today, washers are available that truly meet the needs of a cleanroom laundry. Options include the following...
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