Shapeable Material Technologies for 3D Self‐Assembly of Mesoscale Electronics

Abstract

simple transistors and logics to highly integrated microcontrollers and displays, the latter of which utilizes some of the most technologically advanced processes available in the industry. [3] The success of these technologies has been achieved through enhanced integration of various active functional blocks such as transistors, digital logics, and analog circuits, along with advances in miniaturization and simplification of the overall manufacturing process, eventually leading to large scale, parallel fabrication of silicon chip-based microelectronic components and systems. [4,5] However, many of the manufacturing steps in assembling these electronic components remain either semiparallel or sequential in nature, including processes as dicing, pick and place, packaging, and final assembly of the device. Each additional sequential step increases costs and should ideally be avoided, however substantial streamlining is not always feasible in complex manufacturing processes. [6] More critically, highly integrated silicon-based devices still require several external supporting components for their operation such as wiring, powering, sensing, and communications that cannot be easily integrated within the planar surface of a silicon die. Thus, sensors, actuators, capacitors, coils, antennas, and optics, each crucial for the complete system, are typically placed separately from the silicon chip onto a printed circuit board (PCB), or integrated within another package (Figure 1a). While the need for ever decreasing sizes has demanded tremendous investments and efforts in the manufacture of completed assemblies, the miniaturizing of 3D electronic components (Figure 1b) and systems has nevertheless reached the range of mesoscopic sizes (<1 mm) where the manufacture and assembly of components experience challenges with respect to yield, costs, and reliability. [7] As a result, these issues limit the fabrication potential and commercial viability of components and systems to scales around 1 mm, [8] and despite efforts to improve the planar construction of mesoscopic 3D devices, the results are seen as inefficient and experience difficulties in achieving high performances while maintaining reasonable complexity. Despite the great success in manufacturing active electronics, such concerns are strongly related to the fabrication of passive electronic components like inductors, capacitors, antennas, and resonators where material properties (e.g., mechanical, magnetic, and electrical) and geometry play a crucial role. [8,9] In order to downscale these devices further and improve integration with active electronics, novel fabrication strategies are required.Electronic devices and their components are continually evolving to offer improved performance, smaller sizes, lower weight, and reduced costs, often requiring the state-of-the-art manufacturing and materials to do so. An emerging class of materials and fabrication techniques inspired by self-assembling biological systems shows promise as an alternative to the more traditional m...

Magnetic origami creates high performance micro devices

“…6a). The fabrication starts with a shapeable polymeric layer stack 21 (SPS) required for self-assembly of the magnetic rotor comprising a 100-nm-thick metal organic SL, 100-nm-thick hydrogel (HG), and 200-nm-thick polyimide (PI). Then the whole structure is covered with 15 nm Al 2 O 3 and followed by a capacitor stack containing another 15 nm of Al 2 O 3 sandwiched between two 40 nm Al electrodes.…”

“…It is, however, striking that self-assembly of mass-produced 3D electronic devices has failed to enter any industrial-level manufacturing schemes even nowadays. Among various self-assembly strategies, so-called “micro-Origami” which is the art of self-folding two-dimensional (2D) nanomembranes into micro-architectures 4–9 , has opened up novel ways in constructing 3D mesoscale devices of “Swiss-roll” 10–16 , polyhedral 17,18 and even more complex 19,20 shapes benefiting from state-of-the-art wafer-scale manufacturing technologies 21–23 . However, mesoscale 3D self-assembly of nanomembrane devices faces severe challenges associated with low yield, wide parameter spreading, and bad reproducibility.…”

3D Self‐Assembled Microelectronic Devices: Concepts, Materials, Applications

“…A set of novel wafer-scale technologies have led to new origami-like MEMS and NEMS architectures [34] based on mechanically active and stimuli-responsive materials which can be summarized into the class of shapeable materials technologies. [56] Planar patterns prepared from these materials via lithographic and thin-film methods can be released from the carrying substrate and then deployed to form 3D architectures in a way similar to how origami is assembled from a piece of paper. In contrast to this classical handmade craft, the structures created by shapeable materials technologies rely on monolithic, parallel self-reshaping principles generating complex mesoscale architectures on a wafer scale.…”

Mechanical Characterization of Compact Rolled‐up Microtubes Using In Situ Scanning Electron Microscopy Nanoindentation and Finite Element Analysis

“…Rolled‐up nanotechnology has offered an advanced platform based on strain engineering to deterministically rearrange 2D nanomembranes into 3D structures realizing complex 3D micro‐ and nanoelectronic as well as optical and microfluidic components. [ 5–9 ] Over the past decades SRM‐based electronic devices with outstanding performance such as SRM capacitors, [ 10–14 ] inductors, [ 15–19 ] transistors, [ 20–22 ] sensors, [ 23,24 ] diodes, [ 25 ] and antennas [ 26 ] have been successfully demonstrated. The SRM devices are by nature thin‐film structures that are self‐assembled into 3D microarchitectures.…”