What Is A Cleanroom? Understanding It's Importance in Controlled Environments

Cleanroom refers to the air cleanliness to reach the prescribed level of space for human activities, the function is to control particulate contamination, in order to meet the production of precision products and scientific experiments to meet the requirements of the activities. Clean Room is not only control ‘clean’, different industries and sectors of temperature, humidity, lighting, noise, static electricity, micro vibration have different requirements of the multi-functional integrated whole.

1.Classification of Cleanrooms

According to the flow state of airflow: There are mainly three types of airflow distribution, non-unidirectional flow cleanroom, unidirectional flow cleanroom and vector cleanroom.

According to the nature of the controlled particles: Divided into industrial clean room and biological clean room, the former control dust and other non-biological particles, the latter control biological particles such as bacteria.

Classification according to the degree of air cleanliness: If the level of the clean room is described only by the number of dust particles, it can be assumed that the size of the dust particles is 0.5μm, which is divided into 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, the smaller the value, the higher the level of purification.

2.Design Principles for Cleanrooms

Air Filtration: Use HEPA and ULPA to remove airborne particles.

Air Flow: Design proper air flow patterns to maintain cleanliness and prevent contamination.

Positive Pressure Control: Maintain indoor pressure higher than the outside environment to prevent outside contaminants from entering.

Surface Materials: Use materials that can be easily cleaned and sanitized to reduce particle build-up.

Personnel Control: Limit access to personnel and require appropriate clean suits and personal protective equipment.

3.Key components of a cleanroom

Air Handling System: Includes air filters, fans, heating and cooling units, etc., used to process and supply clean air.

Cleanroom Shell: Includes walls, floors, ceilings, doors and windows, usually made of materials that do not easily accumulate dust.

Purification equipment: Such as Air Showers, transfer windows, etc., used for the purification of personnel and materials.

Monitoring system: Used to monitor environmental parameters such as temperature and humidity, cleanliness, differential pressure, etc.

4.Application Areas of Cleanrooms

Cleanrooms are widely used in electronics, semiconductor, pharmaceutical, biomedical, optical and aerospace applications. Specific applications include:

Semiconductor manufacturing: The manufacturing process of chips requires a very high level of environmental cleanliness.

Biomedical: Including medical, food and other industries, mainly to control viruses, microorganisms and other living particles and inanimate particles.

Electronic industry: Such as large-scale integrated circuit production, the environmental requirements promote the development of cleanroom technology.

Aerospace: For the development of new satellites and space technology, as well as new missiles and other weapons.