New optical and electric-field-assisted fluidic pick-and-place technique

Abstract

Electrophoresis is a classical electrochemical transport process, which is based on the migration of charged particles in a suspension by the influence of an electric field. One of the important applications of this technique is the study of DNA/RNA hybridization on bio-electronic chips. However, electrophoretic pick and place techniques are currently limited to the serial `pick' and `place' of individual devices or materials. There is a need for the rapid and parallel pick-and-place of individual devices to particular locations on a host substrate. In this paper, we present a novel electrochemical system for non-lithographic, field assisted, fluidic pick and place assembly of devices on a silicon substrate by means of electrical and optical addressing. The methodology presented here can be applied to massively parallel assembly of large semiconductor arrays (> 1000 X 1000) with fast (approximately a few seconds) and accurate positioning for a wide range of device sizes (0.8 - 100 micrometers ).