NewsChannel 9 tours a clean room at Micron’s headquarters in Boise

BOISE, I.D. (WSYR-TV) — Micron Technology’s planned $100 billion project for the Town of Clay includes construction off the largest clean room space in United States history.

It will total the size of 40 football fields, divided into four different buildings, each projected to be 600,000 square feet.

While Central New York will get four of these, Micron’s corporate headquarters in Boise, Idaho will also get one dedicated to manufacturing. Ground preparation is already underway.

The campus already has clean room space focused on Micron’s research and development of better computer chips.

NewsChannel 9 was granted rare access inside the existing, but growing, clean room.

Because it’s 100 times cleaner than a hospital’s operating room, the process to enter is detailed and lengthy.

Humans that enter have to disinfect their hands and cover themselves in protective hoods, gowns and booties. Equipment needs to be wiped down with chemicals.

Inside, a team of engineers and technicians oversee the very automated process.

Chips are tested in manufactured attached to one another. Up to 1,000 are built on massive discs of silicon about the size of a record, called a wafer. Chips that survive the process are cut off and used.

The process involves hundreds of steps, each done by a different machine over the course of three to four months. Wafers are carried in small “cars” across tracks along the ceiling and lowered into machines.

This report is one in a series from NewsChannel 9’s exclusive trip to Micron Corporate Headquarters in Boise, Idaho.

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