Beyond Airborne Particle Counts: Understanding and Monitoring Particle Fallout at Critical Locations

Particle contamination remains a critical challenge across semiconductor, aerospace, battery, and precision manufacturing industries. While airborne particle monitoring is an essential part of contamination control, it does not provide the complete picture. Understanding how particles deposit onto critical surfaces can provide valuable insights to support process control and contamination reduction.

In this webinar, Nanoscience Instruments and Fastmicro will explore how particle deposition rate monitoring complements airborne and surface particle measurements to provide a more comprehensive contamination control strategy.

The session will introduce Fastmicro's Particle Fallout Scanner, designed for continuous particle deposition monitoring with sensitivity down to 0.5 µm and configurable measurement intervals as short as 10 seconds. We will discuss how deposition data can help establish contamination baselines, detect changes and contamination events, compare process conditions, and evaluate improvement actions.

We will also briefly introduce an emerging workflow concept combining particle deposition data with Phenom SEM-EDS for targeted particle characterization and root-cause investigations.

Key Takeaways

• Understand the differences between airborne particle monitoring, particle deposition monitoring, and surface cleanliness inspection, including relevant ISO 14644 standards.
• Learn how continuous particle fallout monitoring provides additional insights at critical locations.
• Explore how deposition data can help detect contamination events, identify trends, and evaluate process improvements.
• Discover the capabilities and potential applications of Fastmicro's Particle Fallout Scanner.
• Get a preview of future possibilities for integrating particle fallout monitoring with Phenom SEM-EDS analysis.