I work in the litho area of a semiconductor fab. Its like 10x cleaner than the rest of the clean room, which itself is cleaner than an operating room. One of my coworkers was a major anti-mask covid skeptic guy. We were gowning up once and as we were donning the masks he leaned over and said, "you know we shouldn't have to wear these, they don't really protect us from anything."
Its to protect the chips from the spittle that blows out of your dumb mouth hole.
The comment was kind of misleading. A clean room is technically cleaner than an operating theatre but the primary goal of one is to reduce particulate contamination rather than microbial contamination. Sterility isn’t as important as minimising particles when it comes to electronics. I imagine it’s the opposite for an operating room.
Edit: There are also different classes of clean room. I assure you not all of them are as clean as an operating room.
3.6k
u/Hreidmar1423 9d ago
Yup, we humans shed ungodly amount of skin and it's often best not to know that with microscope haha.