Surface tension-powered self-assembly of microstructures - the state-of-the-art

By R. Syms, Eric M. Yeatman, V. Bright, George M. Whitesides. 2003

337 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Because of the low dimensional power of its force scaling law, surface tension is appropriate for carrying out reshaping and assembly in the microstructure size domain. This paper reviews work on surface tension powered self-assembly of microstructures. The existing theoretical approaches for rotational assembly are unified. The demonstrated fabrication processes are compared. Mechanisms for accurately determining the assembled shape are discussed, and the limits on accuracy and structural distortion are considered. Applications in optics, electronics and mechanics are described. More complex operations (including the combination of self-assembly and self-organization) are also reviewed.

Subfields: Condensed Matter Physics, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/185a519fece0f84e3ce21c211ee9489f443c968d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Condensed Matter Physics

1. John Peter Whitney
2. Pratheev S. Sreetharan
3. Robert J. Wood
4. Benoît Roman
5. É. Reyssat
6. J. Bico

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Robert J. Wood
2. Benoît Roman
3. É. Reyssat
4. J. Bico
5. Daniela Rus

Citations in the corpus

• Elastocapillarity: when Surface Tension Deforms Elastic Solids (2018, background): “Surface tension forces may even be activated on demand using a small quantity of tin deposited on the hinges (Syms et al., 2003, Filipiak et al., 2009).”
• Monolithic fabrication of millimeter-scale machines (2012, methodology): “Various mechanical latching mechanisms have been demonstrated in MEMS folding, but again taking inspiration from PCB manufacturing, we have chosen a wave soldering approach [22].”