Micro Chips are used in thousands of devices and are one of the main components for the automotive industry. Whether the car is and ICE or EV vehicle, they both use dozens of chips to operate most functions in their car or truck. Most of the industrial chips are now made overseas and a vast majority in Taiwan.

Making chips is expensive and technologically challenging. Most chips are made from layers of silicone substrates and these layers have to be super clean in between each ( zero dust ) or they will short out. In order to keep the assembly rooms clean and dust free, all the air in the rooms is filtered through a series of filtration stages using HEPA filters. HEPA filters can remove 99.9999% of all particles 0.3 microns and smaller and approach 98% removing particles as small as 0.12 microns. Even these small particles can be a problem if they are sandwiched between the layers of silicone. 

Chip plants use Clean Rooms in which to assemble the micro chips and they are classified as: Class 1000, Class 100, Class 10 and Class 1. These numbers indicate the number of particles per cubic foot or micrograms per cubic meter in the room as measured by a particle counter. As a comparison, any room in your home will probably have 50,000 to 100,000 sub-micron particles per cubic foot. These are not visible with the naked eye, but they are there. So taking your room from 100,000 particles per cubic foot down to 100 or 10 particles per cubic foot is no easy task. In fact, the people that work in these rooms are completely gowned and using recycling breathing packs. 

Clean rooms make up the majority of the area encompassed by the Chip manufacturing plant and the cost for the rooms can be in excess of $10 million each. An entire plant could cost upwards of $1 Billion. This is one of the major reasons why there are no new Chip plants being built in the US at this time. This may change in time but for now we are going to see a continuing shortage of chips into the near future.

For more information on HEPA filters and HEPA systems please go to our website at:   http://www.pureairsystems.com     or call us on our toll-free number at:  800-869-8025.

 



Post Comments


About the Author: Don Musilli

My name is Don Musilli. I started Pure Air Systems in 1985 and then sold it in 2006. I continue to consult for PAS and write their blog and control their Twitter account. I also, on occasion, make changes to the website. The company is now almost 26 years old and has been a major player in offering commercial grade, high performance HEPA and Carbon based filtration systems for the commercial, institutional, industrial and residential markets.

I currently reside in Englewood, Florida where I write blogs and do social media marketing for a number of clients.


Stay In The Loop

Don't miss out! Like us on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our RSS Feed and get our latest posts.