Clean room manufacturers deal in trust as much as they do in clean rooms. I remember hearing once that the medical profession is the only profession from which perfection is always demanded. At the time I heard that, it seemed like a sensible enough declaration. When medical professionals and technology are unreliable, people can suffer for it. But you don’t have to think too hard before you can think of other examples of professions in which failure is not an option. You don’t want the Continue reading
High Tech Fabrication in Semiconductor Clean Rooms
Ever heard of Moore’s law? The law states, basically, that approximately every two years, the number of transistors that can be included in an integrated circuit doubles. In other words, every two years, the amount of necessary space occupied by the transistors in a computer gets cut in half. The expression of Moore’s law is that on an ongoing basis, computers are becoming smaller and smaller. Why is this? There are two reasons. First: investment in new computer technology is never in Continue reading
Laminar Clean Rooms and Bubble Boy
I’ve long been a fan of the T.V. show, Seinfeld. In case you’re not familiar with the show, it’s a situational comedy written by real-life comedian Jerry Seinfeld in which he and the rest of the cast, over the course of nine seasons, act out series of observational comedy-related vignettes in half-hour increments. I’m reminded of an episode that featured a minor character who had to be permanently housed in a bubble in order to compensate for his diminished immune system. On and off during Continue reading
Clean Room Air Showers are Important Clean Room Accessories
Air showers – you’ve probably seen them in science fiction movies. They’re the equipment that is responsible for the burst of air or other gasses when a person enters certain kinds of clean rooms with strict air quality regulation requirements. There exist types of clean rooms that are so rigidly controlled in terms of their air contaminant tolerance levels that it is necessary to install peripheral contaminant control and elimination utilities like air showers. Air showers are used to dislodge or otherwise remove contaminants from the Continue reading
Advanced Research and Manufacturing Clean Rooms
On November 26, NASA launched its latest excursion to the surface of Mars; 244 days from now, the Curiosity probe is scheduled to touch down on the surface of Mars. The 2,000 lbs, nuclear powered rover has been described by NASA officials as the most advanced scientific laboratory ever created, and it is planned that the rover will operate for a little less than 700 days on the planet, collecting and analyzing soil and rock samples, taking photos and sending all of its findings back to earth. It is one of NASA’s most ambitious projects ever, and it all began in a clean room.

Liftoff on November 26 of the Mars Science Laboratory Continue reading
The Importance of Clean Room Clothing
The words “clean room” are just as likely to evoke images of people in protective clothing as they are to evoke images of actual rooms and equipment. As important as all of the constituent equipment in a clean room is, the protective clothing often worn by users of clean rooms is just as important as much of the actual clean room equipment. This is true for a number of reasons. One of the principal purposes that clean rooms serve is air contaminant control. Humans are a primary source of air contaminants. They generate and shed dead skin cells, which contribute in very Continue reading
Clean Room Companies: Equipment and Systems
There are two kinds of buyers when it comes to clean rooms: equipment buyers and unit buyers (to learn more about clean rooms, see the brief informational video above). Equipment buyers are companies or representatives of companies who procure parts for existing clean rooms. Some of these parts can include work benches, fans, lighting systems and even larger, more complicated equipment such as air showers and replacement wall paneling. Unit buyers are buyers who buy entire clean room systems, either for the creation of a new clean room environment Continue reading
ISO Clean Room Guidelines
If you were to take special instrumentation and collect a sample of the air that you’re breathing at this moment, you’d be likely to find, once you brought the air to a laboratory, that it contains a certain level of contamination. The list of the contaminants you would probably find is likely to include particles of organic origin such as dead skin and dander as well as contaminants from non-animal sources; pollen is an example of such a contaminant. Depending on the context, the presence of these and other contaminants in sufficient quantities can be disruptive. This can be Continue reading
Clean Rooms: Many Types, Many Uses

Clean room image courtesy of Abtech, Inc.
Clean rooms seem like some of the most advanced industrial utilities out there. After all, the most advanced clean room varieties are capable of filtering air to the extent that within a given cubic meter of atmosphere, there can be found no more than 10 particles of 0.1 micrometers in size (just for reference, a micrometer is Continue reading
The Evolution of Clean Room Systems

Clean room image courtesy of American Cleanroom Systems.
Who can say when the history of industry officially began? Even within industry, there probably are disagreements about what disciplines qualify as industrial. These questions may be unanswerable, but for students of the history of industry’s development, it’s possible to look at certain developments and learn. The history of Continue reading