Dielectrophoresis and electrohydrodynamics-mediated fluidic assembly of silicon resistors

S W. Lee, Laboratory of Integrated Biomedical Micro/Nanotechnology, Birck Nanotechnology Center, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University
Rashid Bashir, Laboratory of Integrated Biomedical Micro/Nanotechnology, Birck Nanotechnology Center, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University

Abstract

In this letter, we present techniques, utilizing dielectrophoresis and electrohydrodynamics, which can be used for assembling single-crystal silicon devices suspended in a solution onto a binding site on a heterogeneous substrate. Silicon resistors with gold/chromium layers located at the end of the resistors and silicon blocks without metal were fabricated on bonded and etched-backed silicon-on-insulator wafers and successfully released into deionized water. The devices were subsequently assembled on a different substrate at specific binding sites by dielectrophoretic and electrohydrodynamic forces with submicron precision. Current–voltage measurements of the assembled resistors exhibited low contact resistance after the solution was completely evaporated and the contacts were annealed.