Economical feasibility study of local cleanrooms as an alternative for conventional cleanrooms in semiconductor manufacturing

The rapid development in semiconductor manufacturing concerning the production of integrated circuits with increasing memory capacity leads to high requirements for production technology. Investment and operational costs for semiconductor manufacturing facilities are correspondingly increasing. Efforts towards the cost reduction and a reduction of the contamination of the substrated lead to a constant redesigning of cleanroom area which consisted of the reduction of expensive cleanroom space and the isolation of the production areas from each other. The concept "Local Cleanroom" means a reduction of the cleanroom area to the space required by the equipment and the application of Protective Transport Systems (PTS) for the transport of the substrate between the equipment with automated interfaces.