Jun Yan peered from a hood covering all but his eyes. Visitors to this clean room, where game-changing research in semiconductor manufacturing occurs, must slip into a "bunny suit" and pull on latex gloves to guard against introducing contaminants -- dust, skin cells, anything that could foul the infinitesimal circuitry of a microchip.

Yan's work represents one element of the research conducted by the Engineering Research Center for Environmentally Benign Semiconductor Manufacturing. The center, founded in 1996 by the National Science Foundation and the Semiconductor Research Corp., a consortium of companies and university research groups, is headed  by Farhang Shadman, University of Arizona Regents professor of chemical and environmental engineering.