A variety of self-assembly procedures have been introduced. An interesting and prospective application of this technology is the manufacturing of heterogeneously integrated electronic circuits. The two main approaches are top-down and bottom-up self-assembly. Top-down selfassembly is a massively parallel approach for assembly and alignment of small but highly functional parts onto a substrate without using additional machinery. This paper discusses a concept where electrostatic forces are used to achieve top-down self-alignment of parts in the micro-and milli scale. This approach is also concievable to accomplish accurate alignment of pre-positioned dies, for example electronic integrated circuits. For this approach complementary and electrically conductive micro-structured patterns serve as alignment structures. Experimental results have verified that it is feasible to accomplish self-assembly and accurate alignment of single micro-structured parts. The alignment forces and kinematics for parts in the range of a few hundred micrometers have been modelled and computed, respectively. Simulations have been performed in Matlab/Simulink. The presented simulation tool along with the experimental results is the first steps towards the modelling and the realisation of a massively parallel assembly approach of dies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.