What is Cleanroom?

Environmentally Controlled Area Cleanrooms

A confined area in which the humidity, temperature, dust particles and contamination are precisely controlled within specified parameters. These locations are the rooms where microchips are fabricated. The air in these rooms is thousands of times cleaner than that in a typical hospital operating room.

Intel
"Making microprocessors demands that the people who make them are as clean as the environment in which they work. This is because a microprocessor-itself about the size of a dime-contains millions of microscopic transistors. The tiniest speck of dust to a chip would be like a Godzilla-sized footprint to us, and it could ruin thousands of transistors. "
http://www.intel.com/education/cleanroom/

Fabrication Cleanroom Specifications
Cleanroom Grade	Standard	Discription
Class 1	ISO 3	A cleanroom where particle count is not to exceed a total of 1 particle, 5 microns or larger in size, in a cubic foot of air.
Class 10	ISO 4	A cleanroom where particle count is not to exceed a total of 10 particles, 5 microns or larger in size, in a cubic foot of air.
Class 100	ISO 5	Particle count not to exceed a total of 100 particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 micron and larger.
Class 1,000	ISO 6	A cleanroom where particle count is not to exceed a total of 1,000 particles, 5 microns or larger in size, in a cubic foot of air.
Class 10,000	ISO 7	Particle count not to exceed a total of 10,000 particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 micron and larger, or 65 particles per cubic foot of a size 5.0 micron and larger.
Class 100,000	ISO 8	Particle count not to exceed a total of 100,000 particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 micron and larger, or 700 particles per cubic foot of a size 5.0 micron and larger.
Micron (Micrometer), (im), Symbol: µ. A unit of length equal to one-millionth of a meter (10⁶); approximately 0.000039 of an inch. (The term micrometer has replaced the term micron that was used before 1967.)

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