Tag Archives: clean room

Clean Rooms and Duct Tape

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In the days, months and years immediately following the September 11th, 2001 attacks, threats to national security seemed to be popping up out of nowhere, some credible, some incredible. I remember, for example, when fear of coordinated biological warfare became evident in news coverage and in the repertoires of comedians. If I remember correctly, people began stocking up on duct tape. The rumor that duct tape would protect a home in the event of Continue reading →

Industrial Clean Rooms – Reality vs Unreality

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Hard Drive Manufacturing Clean Room

Hard drive manufacturing in an industrial clean room – image source

You might not think of clean rooms as being industrial utilities. Many people might instead picture scenes from a Dustin Hoffman movie involving the Ebola virus when they hear the words “clean room.” But the fact is that clean rooms are actually rather common in a variety of industrial contexts. This has become increasingly true as electronics have become more important to our economy. As those electronics become more advanced, the conditions under which they must be Continue reading →

The Responsibility of Clean Room Manufacturers

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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

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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

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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 →