Willis Whitfield

Willis Whitfield ( born December 6, 1919 in Rosedale, Oklahoma, † November 12, 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico) was an American physicist and inventor of the modern clean room.

From 1954 until his retirement in 1984 Whitfield worked at Sandia National Laboratories, where he was also responsible for the contamination control in the manufacture of parts for nuclear weapons. Manufacturing processes that were sensitive to dust, since the 1950s took place in clean rooms with turbulent dilution ventilation. The resulting achievable air quality, measured by the number of dust particles per volume, no longer met the needs of more advanced technology.

Whitfield's invention of low-turbulence displacement ventilation ( " laminar flow" ) at the beginning of the 1960s allowed against the hitherto existing cleanrooms a reduction in the density of airborne particles by several orders of magnitude. Thus clean rooms clean room classes were 100 and better ( according to the old American standard FS 209E ) or the grade 5 or better ( ISO standard) possible. These cleanrooms are required for all products of microelectronics and are also used in the production or packaging of medical devices and drugs.

For his invention Whitfield was honored several times. He died on November 12, 2012 in Albuquerque prostate cancer.

Single Documents

• Physicist ( 20th century)
• Inventor
• Americans
• Born in 1919
• Died in 2012
• Man