Building one of Europe’s largest cleanrooms

Published: 4-May-2018

In 2015, KleanLabs completed its largest project so far. ELI-ALPS, a laser research centre in Szeged, Hungary, which occupies thousands of m2 of cleanroom space, equipped with KleanLabs cleanroom doors and pass boxes

Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) is an international research institute that performs experiments with high performance lasers. The institute, which collaborates with the European and international scientific community, has three research centres in Hungary (Szeged), the Czech Republic and Romania.

The facility in Szeged is named after the Attosecond Light Pulse Source (ALPS). The main goal of the centre is to advance laser technology by providing a wide range of light sources that emit ultra-short pulses including; coherent extreme vibration (XUV), X-ray and attosecond pulses. These experiments support scientific and technological development of high peak intensity and high-performance lasers.

KleanLabs on site

The cleanroom needed to be constructed with a high degree of skill and professionalism since ELI experiments are incredibly sensitive. KleanLabs was responsible for the technology within the cleanroom, such as the cleanroom doors and pass boxes, while a parent company carried out the building and design.

During construction:

  • more than 12,000 m2 of wall structure was installed
  • the complex system of cleanrooms created up to 3,600 m2 of floor area
  • to close the cleanroom corners, thousands of meters of antistatic aluminium edge profiles was used
  • 20,000 cartridge cleaner sealing materials and 3,000 m2 of sheet material were used to achieve optimum quality.

The cleanroom complies with ISO-14644 standard and has optimal air compression, thanks to the advanced ventilation system that also maintains the required purity level.

KleanLabs was able to assist the client in some very specific requests, one of them being that the materials used in the research centre must receive an anti-reflective coating. This was critical since the primary efficacy factor for laser and light experiments is to minimise the area of reflective surfaces.

The project was a huge success and produced the largest cleanroom in Hungary.

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