Clean Room

Important: The clean room is a restricted area. Only people with proper training are allowed inside!


Contents

CleanRoom Blog

Here you find news about the state of the clean room and its devices. Please update this blog whenever you make any changes to equipment, introduce new chemicals, or if there is anything else you would like all users to know.

Please add your text to the top of the page. Make a vertical line above your comment and put a time stamp on the end (the two right most buttons in the editing toolbar).

All clean room users should subscribe to this blog via the "watch" feature.

Clean Room Tutorials

To ensure a pleasant and successful working experience for everybody in the clean room there are certain guidelines. Please make yourself accustomed to the tutorials and follow the given rules.

General Information

The clean room is located in Nanotalo (Puumiehenkuja 2 B), rooms 160c-e. In its two rooms it houses a SEM, a e-gun evaporator, as well as working space and chemicals necessary for lithographic nanostructuring. Personal storage room for every users is provided in the designated container. Accessories and consumables can be found on the shelves, chemicals are stored beneath the fume hoods. There is an online form for ordering supply.

Particle Control

The function of the clean room is to provide a particle reduced environment. How well this goal is reached depends mainly on the users. Always remember: You are the biggest particle source in the clean room!

Although you yourself might not be particularly concerned about sample contamination, please consider that it can be a severe problem for someone else.

In order to keep particle level as low as possible follow these Clean Room Rules.

Working in the Fume Hoods / Flow Box

A fume hood or fume cupboard is a workspace designed to limit a person's exposure to hazardous fumes; air is drawn in from the front of the cabinet and expelled outside the building. On the other hand, a flow box is designed to provide an area with lower particle contamination than in the ambient air. It draws in air from the clean room, filters it, and than expells it back into the room.

Therefore, all processes involving solvents or creating hazardous fumes must be carried out in one of the fume hoods and not in the flow box. However, there is a limited ventilation in the flow box for spinning. Unfortunately, there is only one vent system and you have to switch manually between both systems. The switch is located next to the airlock. Setting 1 vents the fume hoods whereas setting 2 vents the flow box. The switch for the laminar (cleaned) air flow is next to the light switch of the flow box. Always remember to switch back to setting 1 after using the flow box so the chemical storage cabinets get ventilated.

For safe handling always work sitting on a chair and keep the glass slide windows as far down as possible. Furthermore, it is good working practice to place your chemicals on a piece of clean room paper and write your name and the name of the chemicals onto it (unless you are using labeled glass jars). Once you are done, dispose your waste solvents properly, clean used equipment, and restore the previous state of the workplace.

Please refill squeeze bottles even before they are completely empty. If you used some supply up or notice that something will run out soon add it to the shopping list immediately.

Safely Working with Chemicals

The clean room is full of potentially hazardous chemicals: solvents, toxins, acids, etc.

The first step to minimizing your own health risk is to know what you are working with. Information about which chemicals are used in the clean room can be found in this list. The safety data sheets are stored in a binder on the shelf in the clean room. When you are planing to establish a new process always try to choose the least toxic alternative (e.g., developing with MIBK instead of ETX) and preferably one using chemicals that are already available. If you are planing to introduce new chemicals to the clean room, always make sure you put them on the chemical list, that the safety sheet is available, and that there are means to dispose them in a safe manner.

Chemicals must be stored in properly labeled containers.

Missing:

  • universal indicator
  • proper waste disposal
  • large solvent spills
  • warning signs


Manuals

Machines

Procedures

Miscellaneous

SEM Booking system

Cleanroom userlist