Study on Human Particle Generation and Motion Analysis during Operation in Clean Room

Abstract

In clean rooms for semiconductor manufacturing processes, automation and robotization are being promoted to reduce the number of workers, but workers are still the main source of particle generation. Reducing particle generation is an important issue not only from the perspective of improving product yield, but also from the perspective of energy conservation by reducing the number of ventilation cycles. Various studies have been conducted on the amount of particle generated by workers performing simulated operations. However, these studies lacked reproducibility because the simulated motions were categorized by the type and number of movements and did not consider individual differences among subjects, such as arm swing width and swing force. In this paper, we used optical motion capture to capture simulated motions in real time, simultaneously measuring motion intensity and evaluating particle generation. We devised a method to measure particle separately from body-derived and exhalation-derived particles, evaluated and discussed it together with the measurement of motion intensity.