Types of Clean Rooms

http://www.ee.byu.edu/cleanroom/particlecount.phtml

Follow this link, and the information at the bottom should be able to assist you.

Good point. The application and its true REQUREMENTS must be understood. Waterlucky, do you actually need to follow the Clean Room practices, or will the Clean Environment be suffice?

You will find it very difficult to maintain a cleanroom environment if you do not follow clean practices.

Good point unless you have to meet regulatory requirements then darn it all, theres that darned paperwork again.

We are assuming here that this is for an industrial application as opposed to pharmaceutical right? Else we will have to deal with viable's as well. Good old Level I, II, II and IV containment areas are just so much fun. (shoot me now)

This is 2 completely different environments. Apples and oranges.

Waterlucky,

Cleanrooms are categorized, and their "particle counts" are reported per unit volume.

In the US, Federal Standard 209 breaks down the cleanroom "classes" according to the number of particles (> a specified diameter) per cubic foot of air. There are Class 1 through Class 100,000 standards.

Elsewhere in the world, there is the ISO 14644-1 cleanroom standard, which breaks down the cleanroom "classes" according to the number of particles (> a specified diameter) per cubic meter of air. There are ISO 1 through ISO 9 standards.

The above is good info.

I can have a UHP (ultra high purity) piping system regardless of the facility it is used in. The closed clean environment is the piping system itself.

So for cleanrooms as such:

Class 1 cleanroom means fewer than 1 particle at 1 micron or smaller per cubic foot of atmosphere. Class 10 is 10 particles, 100, 1000 etc. for 1 cubic foot.

Often you will find that products must be manufactured in say a 1000 cleanroom which is little more than Visquene walls with a HEPA ceiling and some minimal gowning reqs.

The movement these days is for a fab to achieve class 10 external while the tooling environments are fully contained to achieve class 1 internal. As each class is exponentially higher in cost to maintain this is a tremendous cost issue.

Also it is normal to have various levels within the Fab. A facilities level which is simply clean 1000 -requiring only foot protection (booties) and restriction of certain materials; usually wood/paper products and oils, along with environmental control and material cleaning (IPA wipedown). This will be the lowest level. Above this one will have a clean sub-fab. This area will have a full restriction of materials, clean requirments for all items entering and gowning procedures that will include foot and head covering. The upper production level is the production area or Fab itself. Within any of the lower levels a higher class facility may be installed.

In a clean environment we are protecting the environment from ourselves where in most industries we are protecting ourselves from it.That is not to underscore the incredibly large number of safety hazards throughout all pahases of construction in a wafer/chip fab.

Intel used to require breathing hoods, Samsung does not, Oldr fabs such as DMOS IV at Texas Instr. Have area by area reqs (very undesirable). The point here is there are many ways to ensure and maintain clean environments.

If the original poster could be a bit more specific there is more specific info available as the pharma industry and the above differ in requirement.

cr3