Cleanrooms are used extensively throughout the semiconductor, biotech, and life sciences industries. But what is a cleanroom? A cleanroom is an environment, typically used in manufacturing or scientific research, that has a low (or controlled) level of environmental pollutants such as dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles and chemical contamination. Controlling the level of contamination is critical to the operation of any cleanroom, but some cleanrooms require lower levels of contamination than others (more on that later).

Cleanrooms work by:

Depending on the circumstance or purpose of a cleanroom, certain levels of pollutants are allowed within a cleanroom. To give perspective, a typical urban environment contains 35,000,000 particles per cubic meter of air - which corresponds to an ISO 9 cleanroom. On the other end of the spectrum is the ISO 1 cleanroom, which allows only 12 particles per cubic meter of air. Cleanrooms are built to exact standards and use specific equipment to adhere to an ISO cleanroom classification. We’ve listed the different cleanroom classifications below:

Cleanroom Classifications

Cleanroom classifications primarily follow ISO classification system ISO 14644-1, which designates required cleanliness of the air inside the controlled environment. The best way to think about the system is ISO 1 is the “cleanest” and ISO 9 is the “dirtiest.”

Below is a useful table that outlines the ISO standards and related level of contamination.