Owen Hall, OSU campus. Maintained by School of EECS. Staffed by Chris Tasker & Rick Presley. Their task to oversee the clean room is Herculean; they shoulder incredible responsibilities cheerfully and professionally, and with very little staff support. You should obey every instruction or suggestion and do whatever yhey ask by yesterday, if not sooner. You should volunteer to help without being asked. If you ever cause them intentional inconvenience or you behave in an unsafe or irresponsible manner in the clean room, you will be asked to leave the Tate group.

Make sure you are on the cleanroom mailing list:

Mail all clean room users: ece-cleanroom@ENGR.ORST.EDU

Sign up to receive clean room info: https://secure.engr.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/ece-cleanroom

Thee is a sign up scheet to schedule time on the clean room equipment, but JT doesn't know how to access it. Pritha/Okan should update this section of the wiki.

The Clean Room Wiki gives information about equipment and procedures etc. The clean room wiki was started and doesn't seem to have progressed too far (as of June 2011), but it does have a list of some equipment & procedures.

From Chris Tasker 4/2011

The most common way for the spinners in the 418 lab to fail is for liquids to make it into the vacuum port and/or down the outside of the motor shaft. ALL LIQUIDS (photoresist, acetone, alcohol, water, etc. etc…) should be kept away from the vacuum port and motor shaft. The motor shaft is the shaft sticking straight up that rotates the chuck, and the vacuum port is the hole in the center of that shaft.

There are a few common ways for liquids to reach these locations. The first is substrates that are smaller than the chuck. The substrate should always be larger than the spinner chuck you are using, otherwise photoresist can be sucked under the substrate and into the vacuum port through the small hole in the center of the chuck.

The second is during cleaning of the spinner and/or removing the spinner chuck. DO NOT use acetone, alcohol, or any other solvent to rinse directly on the outside of the motor shaft, or to flush the vacuum port in order to try and unclog it. Also DO NOT use solvent to ‘unstick’ a chuck that is hard to remove. Note that the small chuck, which many researchers use, has a very tight fit. It is hard to remove, but this is just friction and does not mean it is stuck on with photoresist.

Finally, operating the spinner with any of the covers removed may result in liquids reaching the motor shaft.

If any researcher that uses the 418 spinners has any questions at all regarding this please contact me. I would be happy to review your process and suggest any modifications necessary. These spinners will continue to work properly for many years if we follow these simple rules.

owen_hall_cleanroom_labs_liquid_waste_policy_feb2011_.pdf

Effective Monday March 21, 2011, ALL WASTE COLLECTION MUST BE CARRIED OUT IN A FUME HOOD. This means we will no longer collect liquid AMD and PR waste in the 5 gallon metal cans.

Also, ALL WASTE MUST BE SEPARATED BY RESEARCH OR INDUSTRY GROUP (hereafter referred to as work group). For the most part we already do this, but specifically this means no more community collection of liquid AMD and PR waste. KEEP IN MIND we still need to segregate and label waste properly into separate containers for each work group. Our main categories are HF acid, other acid, clean acetone and alcohol (AMD waste), and photoresist processing waste (PR waste), with a smaller amount of bases. ONLY clean water down the sinks. The sink drains are not built to handle solvent or acid waste. I had to replace the drain in one of the fume hood sinks recently and it was completely compromised. Not to mention the Willamette River.

The reason for collecting waste in a fume hood is to eliminate exposure to fumes. The reason to separate by work group is to enhance communication and self policing of proper waste segregation.

I have a limited number of one gallon plastic jugs I can dispense to get this process started. After that work groups will be responsible for supplying their own waste containers. Remember, minimally waste containers need to be of the same material and thickness as the container the chemical came in. Avoid glass whenever possible.

The Tate group has a 1 gallon photoresist waste jug in Owen 418 (June 2012).