Semiconductor inspection and metrology equipment must detect defects on a sub-100 nm scale. This makes it very sensitive to contaminants, with an average piece of dust being 500 nm in diameter. As such, they operate in strict class 100 cleanroom environments requiring fewer than 100 particles (>500 nm in diameter) per cubic foot. All objects within must adhere to strict cleaning standards to ensure minimal airborne molecular contamination (AMC). Optical tables pose a unique cleaning challenge in this environment due to their large scale and multitude of blind hole features. Faster methods of cleaning items entering a cleanroom involve full submersion into IPA baths which would be cost-inefficient and difficult to implement for a large optical table. Current cleaning methods for optical tables are manually tedious and time-consuming, requiring a full day of labor from multiple workers.
Our project aims to make the process of cleaning optical tables faster and easier while ensuring sufficient removal of contaminants under class 100 cleanroom standards.