Dielectrophoretic micro/nanoassembly with microtweezers and nanoelectrodes

The contact phase of an assembly task involving micro and nano-sized building blocks is complicated by the presence of surface and intermolecular forces such as electrostatic, surface-tension and Van der Waals forces. Assembly strategies must account for the presence of these forces in order to guarantee successful repeatable micro and nanoassembly with high precision. In this paper, a detailed model is presented for the electrostatic interactions at these scales and qualitatively analyzed. Based on the results of this analysis, dielectrophoretic assembly principles of MEMS/NEMS devices are proposed and experimentally verified with microtweezers for microscale Ni parts and with nanoelectrodes fabricated by electron-beam lithography for carbon nanotube assembly. The successful manipulation and assembly of carbon nanotubes using dielectrophoretic forces produced by nanoelectrodes will lead to a higher integration of CNTs into both nanoelectronics and NEMS.