<p><a href=“http://www.al.com/news/tuscaloosa/index.ssf/2014/09/ua_opens_new_high-tech_clean_r.html”>http://www.al.com/news/tuscaloosa/index.ssf/2014/09/ua_opens_new_high-tech_clean_r.html</a></p>
<p>TUSCALOOSA, Alabama – Dr. Subhadra Gupta showed off the University of Alabama’s new clean room, which is officially known as the Microfabrication Facility, or MFF, Tuesday, September 2, 2014, at the North Engineering Research Center, on campus in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The new 7,111-square-foot lab clean room will be used for research into computer memory and solar panels, among many others.</p>
<p>The lab is an expansion and relocation of the original facility which launched in January 2007. It is directed by Dr. Gupta, UA professor of metallurgical and materials engineering - see her interview above.</p>
<p>The lab is open to researchers across campus, and features three clean room bays. Clean rooms limit airborne particles to specified limits, allowing the production of very sensitive materials that are measured in nanometers.</p>
<p>The facility has one 510 square foot bay, with no more than 100 particles half a micrometer in size, or a millionth of a meter, in each cubic foot of space (832 micrometer particles per cubic meter), reffered to as a Class 100 or ISO 5 clean room. An average room has more than 8.3 million micrometer-sized particles per cubic meter. The other two bays are 863 square feet of Class 1000 or ISO 6 ratings (no more than 8,320 micrometer particles per cubic meter in the air).</p>
<p>~snipped~</p>