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Description / Abstract:
Overview
The continuing trend to finer features on PCBs increased the
negative effect of particles on board yields. Cleanrooms provide a
logical way to reduce the effect of particles, and are more
critical as finer lines are required. Cleanrooms have been used
since at least the 1970s to make printed circuits, but some boards
are still made today without them.
What level of cleanroom is required to make printed circuits?
Unfortunately, no easy answer exists. Clearly the size of the
particles that can cause problems for PCBs are larger than the
concerns of the semiconductor and related industries. Therefore,
îhe requirements are quite different. For PCBs, particles below 15
microns typically will not cause defects, so cleanroom
classification based on the concentration of 5 micron and smaller
particles does not directly correlate with PCB requirements.
This produced a problem for creating this Technical Assessment.
Most of the papers are for semiconductor and other industries that
have finer requirements. This first section, however, does include
the best articles on cleanrooms and their application to the PCB
industry.
The critical areas for cleanrooms are photoresist application,
photoresist and soldermask exposure, phototool manufacturing, and
multilayer lamination. Articles have been published and included in
this assessment for ail but multilayer lamination.
Resist and phototool exposure, which require cleanrooms the
most, are the areas considered most critical to particle
contamination. Clearly, the particles that cause problems at
exposure are large enough that they do not stay airborne for long.
So they will not be removed by the cleanroom HEPA filter system
once they are deposited on a surface. Therefore, surfaces around
the exposure units, as well as the actual boards and phototools,
must be cleaned regularly. This is much more critical than the
specific cleanroom classification.
For this section and others, the papers are organized with
general and basic topic articles in the beginning followed by
specific and detailed topic articles.