A laminar fluid flow model for study of ventilation systems in micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) clean room

This paper reports the simulation based analysis results of air flow in a MEMS clean room aimed at predicting the air borne distribution of 0.5 μm particles as per the ISO standard. These particulate contaminants, if not flushed by proper design of the ventilation system of the clean room can get deposited and accumulated on the MEMS devices under fabrication, contributing possibly to the affected functionality of the device, particularly high precision devices such as single cantilever type precision MEMS sensors and actuators. The results of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) based flow analysis done in COMSOL™ estimated for adverse conditions such as a desired ISO-5 cleanliness degrading to ISO-8 cleanliness due to poor maintenance have been presented. Based on the flow conditions, conclusions on the particle accumulation have been drawn. (paper)