Hosted by: Chuck Black

While lithography was a key technology for making transistors into complex integrated circuits, micro-assembly is potentially a key technology for making nanotechnology into large, complex, heterogeneous, custom systems. The vast majority of semiconductor and materials research will never be integrated into mainstream clean room fabs – assembly is the general solution for heterogeneous integration. We aim to build a new tool for integrating millions of pre-fabricated chiplets or micro-objects into systems, based on deterministic micro-assembly and transfer. The process uses chips initially in solution, and then sorts, transports, and orients chips with directed electrostatic assembly and parallel control. Assemblies are then transferred to final substrates with a stamp or continuous feed roll-based methods, and then electrically interconnected. The current laboratory systems have handled small chips (10 um – 500 um), demonstrated fine registration (