gar
Senior Member
- Location
- Ann Arbor, Michigan
- Occupation
- EE
180123-2415 EST
Last friday I attended an ESD (Engineering Society of Detroit) sponsored tour of the U of M Nano facility in my town.
This is possibly 1 of 4 or 5 of the cleanest labs in the country. The clean lab space is about 11,000 sq-ft at a cost of about $10,000 per sq-ft. An ordinary residence is typically in the $200 to $300 per sq-ft.
The air flow in the lab is laminar (non-turblent) from ceiling to the floor. Many stages of filtering are used to clean the air. 45,000 gallons of ultra pure water are produced every day via ion exchange. The water has a purity to achieve 120 megohms per cu-cm. Air temperature is held within +/- 1 F, and humidity within +/- 1% of 43%.
There are two emergency generators, each close to 1 megawatt, for backup, but not for complete operation of the lab. These are largely for life-safety. They will accept loss of product under a major power outage. Only small quantities of hazardous materials are brought into the clean room.
All room lighting has UV filtering to prevent exposure of photosensitive materials. They have completely retrofitted the lights to LED. In almost a year there have been few failures. Anyone can change a bulb now where with fluoresent lamps an electrician had to change out bulbs.
Inside the clean room people have to be completely covered in special suits. They have snap on name tags, otherwise one has any idea of who is inside a suit.
If you do adequate study, then anyone can use the lab for a fee.
See https://lnf.umich.edu/about-lnf/
.
Last friday I attended an ESD (Engineering Society of Detroit) sponsored tour of the U of M Nano facility in my town.
This is possibly 1 of 4 or 5 of the cleanest labs in the country. The clean lab space is about 11,000 sq-ft at a cost of about $10,000 per sq-ft. An ordinary residence is typically in the $200 to $300 per sq-ft.
The air flow in the lab is laminar (non-turblent) from ceiling to the floor. Many stages of filtering are used to clean the air. 45,000 gallons of ultra pure water are produced every day via ion exchange. The water has a purity to achieve 120 megohms per cu-cm. Air temperature is held within +/- 1 F, and humidity within +/- 1% of 43%.
There are two emergency generators, each close to 1 megawatt, for backup, but not for complete operation of the lab. These are largely for life-safety. They will accept loss of product under a major power outage. Only small quantities of hazardous materials are brought into the clean room.
All room lighting has UV filtering to prevent exposure of photosensitive materials. They have completely retrofitted the lights to LED. In almost a year there have been few failures. Anyone can change a bulb now where with fluoresent lamps an electrician had to change out bulbs.
Inside the clean room people have to be completely covered in special suits. They have snap on name tags, otherwise one has any idea of who is inside a suit.
If you do adequate study, then anyone can use the lab for a fee.
See https://lnf.umich.edu/about-lnf/
.