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2014
Conference Paper
Titel
Particulate cleanliness and cleaning validation in fields ranging from automotive industry to medical devices
Abstract
The need for high levels of particulate cleanliness is obvious for some products such as integrated circuits with structural widths currently as low as 22 nm that are manufactured in the semiconductor industry. However, particulate cleanliness, i.e. the absence of micrometer-sized critical particles, is an important quality feature for numerous products in many other industries spanning the automotive industry, through aerospace and right up to life science, such as medical device technology. The reasons for this are as diverse as the products themselves, ranging from improved performance, miniaturization, reliability and durability up to legal requirements and even personal and environmental safety. Although the size ranges of critical particles vary from one product to the next, some questions overlap, e.g.: · How much particulate contamination of which size is on the product? · What type of contamination is it? · Can a particle source be identified? · To what extent can a state of cleanliness be improved by using cleaning technologies? To answer these questions, suitable cleanliness assessment and cleaning approaches are required, e.g. as derived for the automotive industry.