Cleanrooms

In order to guarantee their performance or their reliability, modern detectors often require construction or integration phases in a clean, controlled environment. To achieve this, DEDIP has about 50m² of dust-free zones allowing work under laminar flow, but, above all, two clean rooms:

A 50 m2 room, called “MEGACAM” (named after the first user project), including 30m2 in ISO8, 25m2 in ISO7 and 5m2 in ISO5 and equipped with an equipment airlock. The ISO8 zone houses the CAPTINNOV bonding machine. The ISO5 zone is mainly used for integrating CCD sensors, requiring geometrical precision of a few microns. For these operations, it houses a “VOYAGER” optical metrology machine, with micron precision, usable for parts of up to 150x300x150mm and compatible with all types of surfaces.

Left: Construction of a Cylindrical Micromegas detector for the CLAS12 experiment in the ISO7 zone of the “MEGACAM” room. Right: Integration of a detector for a muon tomograph in the ISO8 zone (taken from the TV documentary “Kheops, mysterious discoveries” broadcast on France 5 TV channel)

The CICLAD clean room, jointly financed by an Île de France region Sésame programme and commissioned in 2016, with a total area of 130m2 in ISO7 class, which comprises an equipment airlock and a washing chamber and in which the temperature and relative humidity are very precisely controlled. By means of a laminar flow system, it offers ISO5 cleanness over about one third of its area, for the most critical operations. Equipped with a 1-tonne overhead crane and two precision tables fitted with silicon carbide gantries instrumented with mechanical metrology systems and an automatic bonding system, they enable large volume detection modules requiring high mechanical precision (tens of microns) to be produced and characterised, for example the Micromegas modules for the ATLAS/NSW project.

Construction of detection panels for the ATLAS/NSW project on the two
instrumented tables in the CICLAD clean room

#4459 - Last update : 06/19 2018

Particle Physics Division

Institute of Research into the Fundamental Laws of the Universe