Clean room designs: State of the art today and directions in the 1990s
Traditional laminar flow and mixed flow clean rooms have evolved substantially since their inventions in the 1960s. There have been major advanced in the attainable cleanliness levels in the cleanroom; however, the most important consideration is the cleanliness of the environment immediately surrounding the wafer. The clean bay/utility chase concept substantially reduced contamination associated with equipment maintenance and repair, and delivering gases and chemicals to the tool. This concept also permitted modification and installation of new process tools with minimum impact on other processes. However, both the ballroom, and the bay and chase designs have high operational and construction costs. The 1990s begin with increased emphasis on integrated and processing and cluster tools where the strategy is on creating and maintaining a clean environment around the wafer. To achieve these goals, an array of new and improved concepts to insure clean wafer processing will be required. With escalating equipment costs and process complexity, it will be critical for manufacturing personnel to support and repair highly automated processing systems and to maintain the high mean time between failure. Techniques to permit realistic process development on the production line will be essential. New concepts for chemical distribution, purification, reprocessing, and recycling will also be necessary. The interrelationship between these and many other issues will be discussed in an effort to predict what effect they will have on modern fabs in the 1990s. 19 refs.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/DP
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 7200597
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-90-0223C; CONF-9005156--1; ON: DE90009512
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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