Description
The microelectronics industry benefits from reduced costs and improved performance afforded by miniaturization of components. Advanced lithographic methods provide the greatest levels of miniaturization in a high-throughput (parallel), high-precision (deterministic) manner, but the same methods are limited in their ability to integrate multiple, diverse heterogeneous materials in a miniaturized system. In contrast, joining diverse materials together into a system typically happens in packaging, using assembly techniques that usually involve serial operations and impose constraints on the sizes and shapes of the components to be assembled. As a result, the benefits of miniaturization are not fully accessible to systems that require the combined properties of diverse heterogeneous materials. Microassembly technologies make the benefits of miniaturization accessible to heterogeneous materials systems and can provide cost savings, performance improvements, and in some cases totally new capabilities. Microtransfer printing, a microassembly technology developed in the John Rogers research group at UIUC, uses elastomer stamps to deterministically manipulate objects that are too small, numerous, fragile, or otherwise difficult to handle in a practical way. The material properties of the stamps provide robust mechanisms of manipulation, controllably retrieving objects from their native substrates and placing them on non-native substrates. Commercially relevant implementations of microtransfer printing include small solar cells for electricity generation, lasers for data storage, and light emitting diodes and integrated circuits for information display and illumination. Pilot-scale manufacturing that uses microtransfer printing produces commercially available, high-efficiency (? > 33–35%) solar modules and demonstrates some of the benefits of miniaturized, microassembled devices. Microtransfer printing technology and applications. (a) Illustration of transfer printing with an elastomer stamp. (b) Small, transfer printed display driver integrated circuit. (c) 90 m2 concentrator photovoltaic tracker that uses transfer-printed cells.
Recommended Citation
Meitl, M. (2014). Technology and applications of microassembly using elastomer stamps. In A. Bajaj, P. Zavattieri, M. Koslowski, & T. Siegmund (Eds.). Proceedings of the Society of Engineering Science 51st Annual Technical Meeting, October 1-3, 2014 , West Lafayette: Purdue University Libraries Scholarly Publishing Services, 2014. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/ses2014/honors/eringen/11
Technology and applications of microassembly using elastomer stamps
The microelectronics industry benefits from reduced costs and improved performance afforded by miniaturization of components. Advanced lithographic methods provide the greatest levels of miniaturization in a high-throughput (parallel), high-precision (deterministic) manner, but the same methods are limited in their ability to integrate multiple, diverse heterogeneous materials in a miniaturized system. In contrast, joining diverse materials together into a system typically happens in packaging, using assembly techniques that usually involve serial operations and impose constraints on the sizes and shapes of the components to be assembled. As a result, the benefits of miniaturization are not fully accessible to systems that require the combined properties of diverse heterogeneous materials. Microassembly technologies make the benefits of miniaturization accessible to heterogeneous materials systems and can provide cost savings, performance improvements, and in some cases totally new capabilities. Microtransfer printing, a microassembly technology developed in the John Rogers research group at UIUC, uses elastomer stamps to deterministically manipulate objects that are too small, numerous, fragile, or otherwise difficult to handle in a practical way. The material properties of the stamps provide robust mechanisms of manipulation, controllably retrieving objects from their native substrates and placing them on non-native substrates. Commercially relevant implementations of microtransfer printing include small solar cells for electricity generation, lasers for data storage, and light emitting diodes and integrated circuits for information display and illumination. Pilot-scale manufacturing that uses microtransfer printing produces commercially available, high-efficiency (? > 33–35%) solar modules and demonstrates some of the benefits of miniaturized, microassembled devices. Microtransfer printing technology and applications. (a) Illustration of transfer printing with an elastomer stamp. (b) Small, transfer printed display driver integrated circuit. (c) 90 m2 concentrator photovoltaic tracker that uses transfer-printed cells.