Study of Part-Site Interactions in Microscale Capillary Self Assembly

Most common microscale assembly strategies are serial based, such as robotic grasp-And-release systems. Regardless of their high cost and limited throughput, these systems are well developed and thus are easily commercialized [1]. Selfassembly (SA) is a parallel process that, when adapted to microscale, offers high throughput. Furthermore, SA eliminates the need for expensive tooling [2-4]. Yet the lack of SA process knowledge hinders its commercial implementation. This work continues our efforts for developing a scaling SA model, meant to serve as a SA system design tool [5]. This model applies a basic parameterization scheme for a single SA event: one part interacting with one receptor site. Accordingly, 4 parameters have been identified for controlling each SA event: kinetic energy Ek of incoming part, binding energy between part and site Eb, the angle φ at which a part arrives at an assembly site, and the probability ρo that a part is well oriented for assembling successfully. The latter is strictly related to part geometry. Previously, the authors have empirically evaluated the effects of φ [5]. The present work assesses how part geometry affects SA outcome