Clean room laboratory

Mohammadreza soleymaniha, Haider Iftikhar, Dong Lin,

Abstractthis
report
explains
the
principles
of
micromanufautring processes which are necessary to produce
micro component in clean room environment. Clean room
principles like classifications and equipments which are used in
order to manufacture micro size products are described as a
process which has been done in a laboratory session in
Tampere university of Technology (TUT).

I. INTRODUCTION

HIS report is a review on the micro manufacturing

components are vital for MEMS industry like silicon
sensors which play undeniable role in recent micro objects
like micro sensors. First of all, we need to know the
definitions and basics of the environment which makes us
able to produce these devices and then familiarize with
techniques in order to manufacture micro parts in different
ways and their differences. In this review, we will explain all
necessary definitions and explain the procedure to make
micro parts for micro sensors in the clean room laboratory in
TUT.

Table1. Clean room classification

Clean rooms are classified by the cleanliness of their air.
There are different standards to classify the clean rooms.
Among Federal Standard 209E, ISO, BS 5295 and GMP EU;
we will explain the two most famous standards, namely,
209E and ISO. as it mentioned in table1, clean rooms are
classified in ordinal numbers, starting from 1 to 9. In order
to define the particle concentration, we can use the following
formula to calculate the air bone permitted concentration.
.

II.

INTRODUCTION TO CLEAN ROOM

A cleanroom is a controlled environment which provides

us possibility to manufacture micro parts. That is a room in
which the concentration of airborne particles is controlled by
different ways to specified limits. Eliminating sub-micron
airborne contamination is really a process of control. These
contaminants are generated by people, process, facilities and
equipment. They must be continually removed from the air.
In other word the amount of particles should minimize the
entrance, generation and remaining of particles inside the
room. The level to which these particles need to be removed

Figure1. Clean room layout

= 10 ( )

(1)

Where: Cn represents the maximum permitted concentration

(in particles/m3 of air) of airborne particles that are equal to
or larger than the considered particle size. Cn is rounded to
the nearest whole number. N is the ISO classification
number, which shall not exceed the value of 9. Intermediate
ISO classification numbers may be specified; with 0.1 the
smallest permitted increment of N. D is the considered
particle size in m. 0.1 is a constant with a dimension of m.
On the other hand, the classification of US standard is very
simple as the class is directly related to the number of
particles per cubic foot of air equal to or greater than 0.5 m.
(1) Class 100,000: -particle count not to exceed a total of
100,000 particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 and larger or
700 particles per cubic foot of size 5.0 and larger.
(2) Class 10,000:- particle count not to exceed a total or
10,000 particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 and larger or
65-70 particles per cubic foot of a size 5.0 and larger.
(3) Class 1,000: - particles count not to exceed a total of
1000 particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 and larger or 10
particles per cubic foot of a size 5.0 and larger.
(4) Class 100: - Particles count not to exceed a total of 100
particles per cubic foot of a size 0.5 and larger.

Minimizing the amount of air bones in clean rooms is the

priority task. For instance, the number of people should be
minimized. In fact, human is the main resource of particle in
air. Other common contaminants that can cause problems in
some cleanroom environments are facilities (Walls, floors
and ceilings, Air conditioning debris,etc), Tool Generated
particles like Friction and wear particles and Lubricants and
emissions. Also Fluids (Floor finishes or coatings, Cleaning
chemicals and Particulates floating in air), as well as Product
generated (Silicon chips, Quartz flakes, Cleanroom debris)
can be categorized as particle resources. In addition, , the
movements in the clean rooms should be limited. It is also
important that people have cleanroom clothing such as
hoods, face masks, gloves, boots and coveralls in the
cleanroom. he major functions of cleanroom clothing
include for example, Protection of product and cleanroom
environment against contamination by people or Protection
of people against solid or liquid hazardous substances and
biological hazards. Worth to mention is that, it shall not
generate contamination. So a proper cloth for the clean
rooms should meet some requirements. For example,
capability of protection against particles and biological
hazards, low particle generation, has static discharge and
should be suitable for sterilization. Figure 2 shows typical
clothing for the clean rooms.
Cleanrooms are classified into 2 categories of air
pressurization, positive (over) and negative (under) air
pressure cleanroom HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air
Conditioning) systems.
Positive air pressure cleanrooms systems are normally used
for Electronics, Aerospace, Optics, Military and Defense
applications, and Research, etc., where the air escaping from
doors, ceilings, or walls, due to the positive air pressure, is
not hazardous and not creating safety or health concerns.
Some cleanrooms are required to be operated at negative air
pressure for hazardous processes using chemicals,
flammable and potentially explosive liquids and powders, to

prevent these chemical or powders from escaping into the

surrounding space.

III.

There are also some specific safety rules to improve the

environment and work safety. These set of rules include
steps and commands for entering and exiting the laboratory,
working the equipments and handling the materials inside
the clean room.
For handling of materials, there are some specific rules to
protect workers safety. As appropriate to the situation and
the quantity handled. Engineering methods to control or
prevent exposure are preferred. Methods could include
process enclosure or mechanical ventilation. In addition, eye
protectors like goggles and face shield should be considered
beside the absolutely important usage of hand gloves. In the
cases of special applications, it is recommended to check the
chemical resistance with the manufacturer of the gloves. In
the case of aerosol or materials producing mist, respiratory
protection should be applied as well.
In the case of skin contact with the materials, we should take
care about the first aid to decrease the probable damage. For
example, if there is a contact with the acetone or isopropanol
The person should Wash off thoroughly with soap and
water and then remove contaminated clothing and wash
before re-use.for each type of contamination there are some
instruction as the first aid, its a necessary responsibility for
everyone who wants to start working in the clean room
laboratory to get familiarize thoroughly the first aids and
safety issues in the working environment to protect himself
and others also from hazards during working with chemical
materials which can potentially be dangerous for human. So
everyone should read the notifications on safety topics and
be aware of first aid shelf in the clean room. For handling
some kind of material like ma-p1220 photo resist, skin
protection should be used in addition to the normal working
clothes. Finally, using tweezers for handling solid materials
is the important hint to protect the human from direct contact
with toxic materials.
IV.

Figure2. Clean room clothing

SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS

MICROFABRICATION PRINCIPLES AND PROCESSES

Microfabrication is the term that describes processes of

fabrication of miniature structures, of micrometre sizes and
smaller. Miniaturization of various devices presents
challenges in many areas of science and engineering like
physics, chemistry and material science. There are some
concepts which are related to the microfabrication process;
photolithography, doping, etching and mask alignment are
some basic definitions which everyone should know them
before starting the actual work in the clean room.these
methods are used to produce micro components made by
silicon.with physical properties of silicon it is possible to
realize a wide range of sensor elements based on thermal,

optic or magnetic effects. Also the mechanical properties of

single crystal silicon allow the making of strong and micro
size components.
A. Photolithography
Photolithography is used for preparing the substrate of a
silicon wafer for the subsequent processing stages. In order
to etch (remove) the desired pattern of the work piece
selectively, a photosensitive layer is applied to the wafer
surface. This layer will be lithographically structured later in
a way that, specified areas of substrate will remain covered
and protected. This method is the most expensive
micromechanical process and plays a critical role in massproduction of microobjects. It is very sensitive procedure.
Windows in clean room should be selected from UV
protected materials and also some filters should apply on the
fluorescent lights to prevent reaction of the light with
photosensitive materials, thats the reason all the clean room
have yellow lights. Without at least 97% UV protection
framed pieces will age and fade more rapidly. Indoor and
outdoor UV light rays contribute to severe color loss, paper
embrittlement and deterioration of framed pieces. These
effects are both cumulative and irreversible. The materials
that make up the piece, the paper or fabric on which the
image is displayed, may become brittle. Photos may appear
yellow or stained with ghostly silver deposits rising to the
surface. Once damage from light has occurred, it can never
be reversed. Photolithography labs have yellow light

because photoresist is sensitive to wavelenghts > 500

nm. Without suited yellow filters, artificial light as
well as daylight will expose substrates coated with
photo resist within seconds or minutes with a dose of

Figure4. Photolithography
several mJ/cm2 making reproducible litho-processes
impossible.
There are two types of photoresist: positive and negative.
For positive resists, the resist is exposed with UV light
wherever the underlying material is to be removed. In these
resists, exposure to the UV light changes the chemical
structure of the resist so that it becomes more soluble in the
developer. The exposed resist is then washed away by the
developer solution, leaving windows of the bare underlying
material. In other words, "whatever shows, goes." The mask,
therefore, contains an exact copy of the pattern which is to
remain on the wafer. [1](figure3)
Negative resists behave in just the opposite manner.
Exposure to the UV light causes the negative resist to
become polymerized, and more difficult to dissolve.
Therefore, the negative resist remains on the surface
wherever it is exposed, and the developer solution removes
only the unexposed portions. Masks used for negative
photoresists, therefore, contain the inverse (or photographic
"negative") of the pattern to be transferred. The figure below
shows the pattern differences generated from the use of
positive and negative resist. (figure3)

Figure3.positive and negative photoresist

Exposing the resistive layer causes molecule chains to break

or to cross-link, depending on the type of resist used. During
this step, the mask pattern is copied onto the resist, which
was applied to a substrate in another step (mask fabrication).
Before depositing photoresist on the silicon wafer, the wafer
should be chemically cleaned to remove particulate matter
on the surface as well as any traces of organic, ionic, and
metallic impurities. There are some common contaminants
like dust from scribing or cleaving, atmospheric dust,
bacteria or abrasive particles. [2]

B. Mask alignment
One of the most important steps in the photolithography
process is mask alignment. A mask or "photomask" is a
square glass plate with a patterned emulsion of metal film on
one side. The mask is aligned with the wafer, so that the
pattern can be transferred onto the wafer surface. Each mask
after the first one must be aligned to the previous pattern. If
each subsequent layer is not placed just right on top of the
layer beneath it, however, the resulting structure can be a
disaster, regardless of how carefully the individual steps are
controlled or how good the resolution may be. [1](figure5)
C. Etch process
By etching, the exposed areas of photoresist from the wafer
and the deposited layer respectively (positive resist) are
removed. The etching methods used for MST must be able
to remove material exactly so that tiny micrometer sized
structures like grooves, bridges and beams are obtained. If
an etching method only dissolves a specific material and it
does not react with other materials, it is considered to be
selective. Another property of etching is that it may produce
different results in different directions of material to be
processed. An etching process is isotropic if the etching
speed is the same at every direction of the material,
otherwise, it is anisotropic. Selectivity and directional
properties play a decisive role in micro structures.
a)

Wet etching

Wet etching used in microelectronics and can produce three

dimensional and surface structures needed in MEMS
industry. The etching solution which may be acidic or
alkaline dissolves the material to be removed. Etching
occurs by dipping the substrate into an etching bath or
spraying it with the etching solution. Depending on the

Figure5. Mask alignment

structure of the material or the etching solution, it can be

isotropic or anisotropic. However, Wet etchants are usually
isotropic, which leads to large bias when etching thick films.
They also require the disposal of large amounts of toxic
waste. For these reasons, they are seldom used in state-ofthe-art processes. However, the photographic developer used
for photoresist resembles wet etching. [3]
b)

Dry etching

Dry etching involves the exposure of the substrate to an

ionized gas. Etching occurs through chemical interaction
between the ions in the gas and the atoms of the substrate.
Dry etching techniques can be used to structure almost any
material suited for MEMS. It is also can be considered as a
perfect alternative for wet etching for material like platinum
or tin oxide (difficult to wet etching). Reactive-ion etching
(RIE) (figure6) is an etching technology used in
microfabrication. It uses chemically reactive plasma to
remove material deposited on wafers. The plasma is
generated under low pressure (vacuum) by an
electromagnetic field. High-energy ions from the plasma
attack the wafer surface and react with it. [4]
Each of the above method have their advantages and
disadvantages. A wet etching method has quite low cost and
is easy to implement and has a high etch rate in addition to
the good selectivity for most of materials. But on the other
hand it has limited range of resolution for objects with less
than 1um and is hazardous sue to direct contact of the
operator to the chemicals and the most important negative
aspect is contamination of wafer during etching which
causes problem in the final product. Dry etching method
which is performed in vacuum chamber (RIE device) has
good ability to define small feature size with less than 100
nm. but on the other hand, it suffers from high cost and
expenses .it is hard to implement a dry etching method and
has low throughput and poor selectivity and is potential of
radiation damage. It is an anisotropic etching. [5]

Figure6. RIE working principle [5]

are some differences between samples which are produced

by dry etching and wet etching.
V.

LABORATORY PROCESS

After reading the instructions for safety issues, and getting

familiarized with the principle of clean rooms and
equipment for micro-manufacturing, groups entered to the
room by wearing clothes suitable for the clean room
laboratory. Students were divided into two groups. One
group performed dry etching and the other one performed
wet etching. First of all students selected the silicon wafer
according to their groups, namely, the dry etch group ,
selected red wafers covered by LPCVD
and wet etch
group selected green wafer covered by PECVD
. Next
step was to clean the wafer to remove dust from the surface,
which was done by putting the wafers on the spinner device
which rotated the wafers at a high rpm to cause centripetal
force to cause particles to slide of the wafer, excess amounts
acetone and isopropanol were drained over the top of the
spinning wafer several times to allow stains and adhered
impurity particles to break of from the wafer. Once the
wafers were treated, the wafers were covered by photoresists
(PR1-2000A) to allow areas of exposure to be separated
from the areas to remain unexposed, however in this step the
whole wafer was covered and then in later steps it will be
fixed and then there would be distinction between the
unexposed and exposed areas for etching. So in this phase,
the wafer was held on a spinner chuck by vacuum and resist
was coated to uniform thickness by spin coating (figure
7).then the coated wafers required be baking on a hot plate
with 130 temperature. The next step was to progress to the
actual lithography process. First, the mask was to be aligned
with the wafer by mask aligner device. By using a
microscope which integrated on the aligner device; we can
adjust the location of wafer with respect to the mask to align
them properly. The adjustment can be done in 3D space.
Then we started with the lithography process by starting
exposure to the wafer through the aligned mask. The next
step was to develop the exposed wafers by using developer
solution (RD6). After developing the samples and drying
them by nitrogen gun, students put their sample under
microscope to observe the initial product. Still, there was
one other step to etch the samples. This is the stage, where
we took into account, which type of etching they have
selected. before starting the etching process, samples should
be backed again under 130 degree for 60s. in order to
perform dry etching, samples should be placed in the RIE
chamber and then by setting Si3N4 etch SF6 and O2 recipe
with the etching time of 2 minutes 10 seconds , the samples
are etched. But, students who decided to perform wet
etching required dipping their sample by the help of
tweezers inside HF acid for 2 minutes and gently whirling in
the solution to cause slight agitation to help increase the
efficiency of the etching process. After etching of the
exposed photoresists, students put their sample under
microscope to evaluate their final product together. There

Figure7.photoresist spin coating

VI.

RESULT EVALUATION

There are some points which are important to mention as the

result of the laboratory work.
First, it required three attempts during the etching with 10%
HF etchant and the results were then somewhat
acceptable(wet etching), also one of the samples needed to
eteched for 4 times in dry etching process. There were some
scratches and some unethches areas in the wafer a distinct
region of discoloration was the indication of the unetched or
areas not properly etched in the wafer however we do need
confirmation on that.these scratches probably are made by
tweezers while handling them from one part to another part.
in comparison the dry etching wafers yielded better results in
fact the dry etched wafer had significantly less spots of
under-etched areas or overetched areas and had crisper wafer
edged in the actual etching area. Also, the main difference
was the anisotropicity between the two which was seen in
the wet etched wafer is better focus under the microscope.
Figure 8 illustrates a dry etched silicon wafer as the final
product, as it is obvious it has few number of scratches on
the surface and has less damaged areas due to overetching
(more unique etched surface).

VII.

CONCLUSION

The clean room laboratory session was a unique chance for

many students to have micro manufacturing process like
hands on session to observe a real process by their own eyes,
working in such a place at least for the author seems to be
quite exciting. Thats an absolute opportunity for lots of
students to fabricate a real micro component by their hand,
to experience what they have learned

[2] http://www.ee.washington.edu/research/microtech/cam/
PROCESSES/PDF%20FILES/Photolithography.pdf
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etching_%28microfabricati
on%29#Wet_etching
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactive-ion_etching
[5] http://www.mrsec.harvard.edu/education/ap298r2004/Er
li%20chen%20Fabrication%20III%20-%20Etching.pdf

Figure8. Dry etched wafer (final sample)

during the theoretical lecture sessions. Also, working with
clean room equipments provide a chance to familiarize
better with the environment for future works. Students all
agreed that working in clean room environment is an
interesting place to develop their capabilities for future
research plans. As a very important proposal, it is better to
consider more chance for students or at least for group of
students who are more interested in working in clean room
laboratory instead of having so much calculation exercises
during the course. Clean room experience is a brilliant
chance for every researcher who wants to make a research in
the field of MEMS. So we strongly recommend considering
at least 4 sessions of clean room laboratory. Some additional
activities can be defined for interested students and even can
be defined as a research plan(for a year) for student s are
seeking for a good research plan to publish scientific papers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work described in this paper has been performed as a
part of Design of Silicon sensors (MIT-4057) by Tampere
University of Technology (TUT).we want to thank Tomi
Rynanen for guiding and instructing the group during the
experiment.

REFERENCES
[1] http://www.ece.gatech.edu/research/labs/vc/theory/phot
olith.html