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Practical
Considerations for Designing a "Firesafe" Tool
Frederick W. Kern - IBM
Microelectronics
, Alastair R. Brown - Rushbrook
Consultants
(SSA Journal Volume 14 Number 3 -
Autumn 2000 pp. 9 - 16
)
There
have been many developments in the last five years enabling tool
manufacturers to design wit benches and other tools that have a lower
fire hazard than most existing tools.
Many previous papers and seminars have
highlighted the risk associated with combustible polypropylene wet
benches and advice is now freely available in terms of material
flammability standards, such as FM4910, the SEMATECH protocol for
benchmarking process contamination and recently revised SEMI
Standards.
Although tools are now being
manufactured form firesafe material in significant numbers, little
has been published about the practicalities of designing and
manufacturing tools form the new materials. Drawing on experience
from equipment manufactured in Europe this paper will explore some of
the issues associated with firesafe tool design and manufacture,
including the risk assessment based approaches to dealing with the
residual risk from combustible components and raw materials.