Self-assembly of dies through electrostatic attraction: modelling of alignment forces and kinematics

Abstract

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 self-assembly 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.