The future of cleanroom robots

Citation

Palmer, R. (1998), "The future of cleanroom robots", Industrial Robot, Vol. 25 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.1998.04925aaa.002

The future of cleanroom robots

The future of cleanroom robots

The authorRick Palmer is Worldwide Cleanroom Account Manager, Staubli Corp., 383 Diablo Road, Danville CA 94526, USA. Tel: +1 510 831 8752 Fax: +1 510 831 9896 E-mail: RPalmer2@compuserve.com

Introduction ­ definition of cleanroom

Some sterile or delicate products cannot be subject to any contamination and cannot be manufactured in a traditional working area but in a cleanroom environment.

A cleanroom environment is a closed area where conditions are controlled, according to the requirements, the number and size of particles and undesirables molecules in the air and the temperature, humidity, pressure, supply of filtered air.

In this environment, traditional robots, generating a high number of particles, are not allowed. Therefore, special robots have been designed to meet the criteria of cleanroom specifications that come within the scope of two main standards: the American Federal Standard 209 E and the Japanese JIS B9920.

Current cleanroom design and applicationsToday's CR robots have specific characteristics:

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  polyurethane paint;

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  protection against oxidizing for unpainted parts;

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  tight joints and caps;

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  nickel-plated wrist;

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  controlled particle emission;

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  electric and pneumatic lines integrated in the arm.

They are used in the electronics and semiconductor industries to manufacture wafers, disk drives, flat panel displays, cellular phones; where today's robots bring high precision, dexterity, speed and cleanliness. Other fields using such robots are:

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  chemical industry for product handling and control;

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  medical and pharmaceutical industries for packaging, handling, implant grinding, laboratory sample handling and even to assist during surgery;

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  food industry: finishing, control, handling.

CR robot of the future

The future of robotics in cleanroom environments is very bright. The combination of increasingly stringent particulate requirements coupled with the ergonomic requirements of human workers inevitably leads to greater numbers of robots in cleanroom environments.

The leading usage of these robots will be in material handling applications in ultraclean environments. The current specification of particulate generation in a cubic foot of air will continue to tighten as critical design sizes of products shrink. In semiconductor manufacturing, future design rules of 0.18 micron and smaller call for extremely tight control of particulates. Particulate contamination create so called "killer defects" in chips by creating failures in the manufacturing processes. As design rules become smaller, the particulate size that creates a "killer defect" also shrinks dramatically. the challenge of dressing the human worker in such a way to prevent generating such particles is increasingly difficult. At the same time, manufacturers are seeing the value of automating critical processes creating further demand of intelligent manipulators such as robots to provide wafer transfer through a series of manufacturing steps.

Currently there are many thousands of robots working in such applications throughout the world. As the environment becomes more and more intolerant of particulate contamination, the cleanroom robot industry will face many new challenges especially in the areas of design and support.

DesignIn general end user customers of process equipment are demanding "better, faster, cheaper". These seemingly contradictory demands are placing new pressures on robot designers to create ever more efficient products. With a state of the art wafer fabrication costing more than $1 billion the cost of downtime is of the order of $100,000 per hour. This factor has created the demand for minimum unscheduled downtime, very low maintenance, and up-time in excess of 99 per cent.

A square foot of class 1 cleanroom space costs more than $3,500 to build. Efficient use of this space is increasingly important and the demand for a smaller process equipment footprint is very strong. This factor will create a demand for a robot with very efficient work envelopes and creative layouts of process equipment around the robot. Robots with maximum usable work envelopes given the robots reach will become very popular. One factor to increase the efficiency of the robot is to provide the dexterity offered by six axis robots that can do useful work in as large a volume of space as possible. This allows the designer the flexibility to use the entire available workspace, yielding the most efficient system possible.

Product supportGiven the investment in production capacity and the very high cost of downtime, the end user is demanding a higher level of product support. With production of semiconductors being truly global, the equipment supplier needs an extensive infrastructure to meet the support demands of the customers. Factors such as reaction time and local product support will be larger in the future. To be successful the robot manufacturer will be required to supply a global support network and provide very rapid response to a problem. This will cause the weakest suppliers to either merge, or go out of business, leaving a limited number of strong companies in the business. The cleanroom industry has grown to the point where the small, weak companies will disappear leaving those that can provide not only the product industry demands, but also the product support to meet the ever increasing demands of the end user customer.

The future of robots designed to operate in ultraclean environments will continue to grow. With applications as diverse as medical applications, such as robotic systems for orthopedic surgery, to handling semiconductor wafers and organic compounds in ultra clean environments, the future for those robot producers that can meet the increasingly stringent demands of the customer is extremely bright.

Rick Palmer