Parallel microassembly with electrostatic force fields

Assembly and disassembly of bare chips using on-substrate linear micro vibromotor arrays

“…Although the gross positioning could be done sequentially in pick-and-place fashion, vibratory palletization [9], a part orienting method common to centimeter-scale mechanical parts, could provide very efficient means of parallel gross positioning of micro components. During the palletization, surface adhesion forces can be virtually eliminated by applying vertical vibration in ultrasonic range as recently reported in [1]. Such vertical vibration can also facilitate the operation of the linear micro vibromotor by reducing the friction between a micro component and the substrate.…”

“…Mechanical shock can be applied to the gripper to drop the stuck component (Figure 1 (e)), with the price of inaccurate positioning of the released component (Figure 1 (f)). One way to overcome this problem is to design a device on the substrate that facilitates component positioning so that gross positioning is done in the conventional pickand-place fashion 1 , whereas fine positioning is done by the on-substrate positioning device. This concept is illustrated in Figure 2, where a on-substrate linear actuator pushes a inaccurately positioned micro component (e.g., as a result of the "shock release" shown in Figure 1 (e) and (f)) against a fixture anchored to the substrate (Figure 2 (a)), achieving precise positioning of the component (Figure 2 (b)).…”

“…This selective resonance of the micro cantilever impacters via an external vibration energy field [15] provides with a very simple means of controlling forward and backward motion of the micro linear slider, facilitating assembly and disassembly of a micro component on a substrate. An array of prototype linear micro vibromotor are fabricated using the three-layer polysilicon surface micro machining process provided by 1 or with other processes which are more effective for gross positioning -see Section 4 for an example. the MCNC MUMPS service.…”

A Single Universal Force Field Can Uniquely Orient Non-Symmetric Parts

“…Together with Howie Choset, they analyzed the resulting dynamical system to obtain interesting results on controllability and programmable force field algorithms based on conservative vs. non-conservative fields [21]. Working with the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center (BSAC), Karl Böhringer and Ken Goldberg explored how MEMS devices employing electrostatic fringing fields can be used to implement programmable force fields for parts manipulation and self-assembly [22].…”

Microassembly of 3-D Microstructures Using a Compliant, Passive Microgripper

“…Self-assembly systems include polyimide joint technology [3] and solder self-assembly [4], which use heat to drive the self-assembly process, to create microstructures that fold out-of-plane. Plastic deformation magnetic assembly (PDMA) [5] uses strong magnetic fields to fold microstructures out-of-plane, and electrostatic force field microassembly [6] uses ultra-sonic vibration and electrostatic fields to sort and align microparts.…”