Robotic Microassembly E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Discover the latest models and methods for robotic microassembly from around the world

This book presents and analyzes new and emerging models and methods developed around the world for robotic microassembly, a new and innovative way to produce better microsystems. By exploring everything from the physics of micromanipulation to microassembly to microhandling, it provides the first complete overview and review of this rapidly growing field. Robotic Microassembly is divided into three parts:

• Part One: Modeling of the Microworld

• Part Two: Handling Strategies

• Part Three: Robotic and Microassembly

Together, these three parts feature eight chapters contributed by eight different authors. The authors, internationally recognized experts in the field of robotic microassembly, represent research laboratories in Asia, Europe, and North America. As a result, readers get a remarkable perspective on different approaches to robotic microassembly from around the world. Examples provided throughout the chapters help readers better understand how these different approaches work in practice. References at the end of each chapter lead to the primary literature for further investigation of individual topics.

Robotic microassembly offers a new, improved way to manufacture high-performance microelectro-mechanical systems (MEMS). Therefore, any professional or student involved in microrobotics, micromechatronics, self-assembly or MEMS will find plenty of novel ideas and methods in this book that set the stage for new approaches to design and build the next generation of MEMS and microproducts.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Series Page

Title Page

Copyright

Foreword

Preface

Contributors

Part I: Modeling of the Microworld

Chapter 1: Microworld modeling in Vacuum and Gaseous Environments

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Classical models

1.3 Recent developments

Chapter 2: Microworld Modeling: Impact of liquid and roughness

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Liquid Environments

2.3 Microscopic Analysis

2.4 Surface Roughness

Part II: Handling Strategies

Chapter 3: Unified View of Robotic Microhandling and Self-Assembly

3.1 Background

3.2 Robotic Microhandling

3.3 Self-Assembly

3.4 Components of Microhandling

3.5 Hybrid Microhandling

3.6 Conclusion

Chapter 4: Toward a precise micromanipulation

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Handling principles and strategies adapted to the microworld

4.3 Micromanipulation setup

4.4 Experimentations

4.5 Conclusion

Chapter 5: Microhandling Strategies and Microassembly in Submerged Medium

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Dielectrophoretic Gripper

5.3 Submerged freeze gripper

5.4 Chemical control of the release in submerged handling

5.5 Release on adhesive substrate and microassembly

5.6 Conclusion

Part III: Robotic and Microassembly

Chapter 6: Robotic microassembly of 3D MEMS Structures

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Methodology of the Microassembly System

6.3 Robotic Micromanipulator

6.4 Overview of Microassembly System

6.5 Modular Design Features for Compatibility with the Microassembly System

6.6 Grasping Interface (Interface Feature)

6.7 PMKIL Microassembly Process

6.8 Experimental Results and discussion

6.9 Conclusion

Chapter 7: High-Yield Automated MEMS Assembly

7.1 Introduction

7.2 General Guidelines for 2.5D Microassembly

7.3 Compliant Part Design

7.4 μ3 Microassembly System

7.5 High-Yield Microassembly

7.6 Conclusion and Future work

Chapter 8: Design of a desktop microassembly machine and its industrial application to microsolder ball manipulation

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Outline of the machine design to achieve fine accuracy

8.3 Application to the joining process of electric Components

8.4 Pursuing higher accuracy

8.5 Conclusion

Index

Series Page

IEEE Press445 Hoes LanePiscataway, NJ 08854IEEE Press Editorial BoardLajos Hanzo, Editor in ChiefR. AbariM. El-HawaryS. NahavandiJ. AndersonB. M. HammerliW. ReeveF. CanaveroM. LanzerottiT. SamadT. G. CrodaO. MalikG. ZobristKenneth Moore, Director of IEEE Book and Information Services (BIS)

Copyright © 2010 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone]. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at 877- 762-2974, outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Gauthier, Michaël, 1975

Robotic micro-assembly / Michaël Gauthier, Stéphane Régnier.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-470-48417-3 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Robotics. 2. Robots, Industrial. 3. Microfabrication. I. Regnier, Stephane. II. Title.

TJ211.G378 2010

670.42′72–dc22

2009054236

Foreword

In 1995, two papers appeared at the 1995 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS95) that helped precipitate the field of robotic assembly as a topic of research within the robotics community. One of the papers was written by Ron Fearing of the University of California, Berkeley, entitled “Survey of Sticking Effects for Micro-Parts,” and the other came out of Toshio Fukuda's group (first author Fumihito Arai) called “Micro Manipulation Based on Micro Physics.” Both papers did a wonderful job of illustrating the challenges and the opportunities of manipulating micrometer-size parts automatically, essentially defining the “mechanics of micromanipulation” and encouraging many of us, myself included, to pursue robotic microassembly as a topic of research.

However, one could argue that robotic microassembly got its start about 400 years ago with the invention of the optical microscope in Holland. Imagine being someone like Robert Hooke, one of the first to master the use of these instruments. In the 1650s, while he was at Oxford, Hooke began working with microscopes and discovered a hidden world of small insects and tiny creatures in addition to observing plant structures and various materials. In 1665 he published Micrographia, a book illustrating his observations, which is considered one of the greatest of his many considerable achievements. With the publication of Micrographia, others rapidly became aware of this secret world, and it was only natural for people to wonder how one could make similar things. Craftsmen learned that by using microscopic techniques, they could see smaller details that enabled them to make finer and finer mechanisms. Manual microassembly became an important industry in much of Europe, where the watchmaking industry grew in places such as France, Switzerland, Germany, and England.

In the late 1940s, the invention of the transistor by Bardeen, Shockley, and Brattain at Bell Labs began another shift in micromanufacturing. Suddenly there was a newfound need to make really, really small things cheaply, driving Kilby and Noyce to the concept of the integrated circuit. Moore's law began, and batch fabrication, not serial assembly, was the obvious way to make small things cheaply, primarily out of silicon, of course. Then in 1982 Kurt Pedersen published his seminal paper “Silicon as a Mechanical Material,” a paper that is often cited as representing the beginning of the MEMS era (microelectromechanical systems). While the MEMS community abhorred assembly in the early days, the constraints that microfabrication processes placed on the materials with which microsystems could be made as well as their geometry were extremely limiting. What if we could actually assemble microsystems, instead of relying solely on top-down processes such as photolithography, thermal evaporation, and reactive ion etching? This question was being increasingly asked just as IROS began in Pittsburgh in August of 1995.

These historical trends are what motivate robotic microassembly. Though the field as it is currently defined has been highly active for almost 15 years, this book represents a pioneering achievement by creating, for the first time, a complete view of the field from the physics of micromanipulation, to microassembly, to microhandling in general. A first-class consortium of international authors has been assembled to provide a comprehensive, worldwide view. This effort, which helps further define the field of robotic microassembly, will undoubtedly spur researchers and industry to continue their quest to make small things cheaply.

Bradley Nelson

Zürich, Switzerland

May 2009

Preface

This book deals with the current methods developed around the world on robotic microassembly. It is dedicated to Master's and Ph.D. students, and also scientists and engineers involved in microrobotics and also in robotics. As robotic microassembly is a new way to manufacture microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), companies and research institutes involved in this domain will find in this book original methods that can be used to simulate, design, and build new generations of hybrid tridimensional microproducts.

Microproducts are usually divided into two categories by function of the manufactured process used. On the one hand, the standard fabrication using machining or molding is able to produce millimetric and submillimetric pieces (e.g., gears in watches). On the second hand, processes developed initially in microelectronics and based on photolithography have been extended to mechanical structures and are currently used to build MEMS (e.g., air bag sensors). In both cases, the resolution of the details built on the product could be around the micrometer or even less, but the global size of the pieces stays millimetric. The market of miniaturized products, which include always more functionalities in a smaller volume, is increasing very rapidly. In the future, the size of the piece should be reduced below 100 μm, and the microsystem should integrate a large variety of functions including mechanisms, electronic, and control, fluid or optic. It is the reason why a large number of research teams are currently focused on the topic of microassembly.

In MEMS microfabrication, hybridization of technologies is currently obtained using planar assembly (e.g., flip–chip process). However, this method is limited to planar products and does not enable out-of-plane assembly. The advent of a new generation of microsystems based on tridimensional hybrid structures is directly linked with the ability to manufacture microsystems using advanced assembly processes. Two approaches are currently developed in microassembly: self-assembly and robotic microassembly.

Self-assembly consists in creating several minimums of potential energy with a physical field (i.e., electrostatic, capillarity). Microobjects thus need minimum energy and are directly positioned. Self-assembly is a natural process for molecular structures and many examples can be found in nature. These processes are massively parallel but the efficiency and the flexibility still stay low. On the other hand, manipulation robots can be used to assemble micro- or nanopieces. This robotic approach is classically divided into three steps: positioning, handling, and release. This approach is able to reach complex assembly with high flexibility. However, handling and especially release is sensibly disturbed by microscopic peculiarities (i.e., adhesion, deformations of the object, environment). This book focuses on this second approach called robotic microassembly.

Robotic assembly is usually carried out on robotic platforms that consist of a gripping device able to grasp the pieces; some sensing systems able to measure position and/or force; a robot able to position the gripper; and a controller to induce automatic movements and tasks. In the microscale, the same functions have to be considered. In robotic microassembly, the most critical phase is the gripping task, which depends on interactions between the manipulated object and the end-effector of the gripper. Indeed, at this scale, the behavior of the object is the function of the adhesion and surface forces (i.e., van der Waals, electrostatic forces, etc.), which are predominant compared to the volume effects (i.e., weight, inertia).

The design of robotic assembly platforms must be based on a good understanding and analysis of these adhesion and surface forces, which is the objective of the first part of this book. The physical principles involved in the microscale is developed in order to present the expression of forces in several cases. As the environmental parameters (i.e., humidity, pH in a liquid) highly influence the adhesion and surface forces, a specific chapter is dedicated to the relationship between these forces and the environment. These forces induce specific behavior in microobjects that require specific handling strategies to be handled and assembled.

Based on the knowledge on predominant forces in the microscale, new microhandling methods and prototypes have been developed and are listed in the second part. A lot of handling strategies are presented and compared: hybrid handling strategies based on principles that combine self-assembly and robotic assembly; gripping and release principles in the air; and specific handling strategies dedicated to submerged microobjects. Based on this panorama, the reader will easily understand microscale difficulties and will find methods and information to design microhandling principles.

Even though, handling is a critical phase in microassembly, it is not enough to assemble microobjects. The design of the microobject itself and of the robot structure, which have both to be carefully studied, are presented in the third part. The microassembly requires to design and manufacture micropieces able to be connected together to ensure, at least, mechanical links. Today, electrical and fluid connections in the microscale remain a challenge. Moreover, the required mobility (in terms of number of degree of freedom, DoF) and the required repeatability and precision of the robot require a specific design, calibration, and characterization. This third part focuses on these crucial problems, which are keys to assembly micropieces.

We expect that this book, which proposes a complete overview of the state of the art in robotic assembly, will provide a better understanding of the microscale specificities and methods for robotic microassembly to students, engineers, and scientists. They will be able to apply the models and the methods on microproducts and contribute to the development of the robotic assembly in the microscale.

Michaël Gauthier

Stéphane Régnier

Besançon, France

Paris, France

June 2010

Contributors

Reymond Clavel, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

Mélanie Dafflon, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

Nikolai Dechev, University of Victoria, Greater Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Michaël Gauthier, FEMTO-ST Institute, Besançon, France

Pierre Lambert, The Free University of Brussels (ULB), Brussels, Belgium

Yusuke Maeda, Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan

Akihiro Matsumoto, Toyo University, Kawagoe-shi, Saitama, Japan

Bradley Nelson, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland

Dan O. Popa, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas

Stéphane Régnier, University of Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France

Harry E. Stephanou, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas

Veikko Sariola, Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland

Kunio Yoshida, AJI Ltd., Yokohama, Japan

Quan Zhou, Helsinki University of Technology, Helsinki, Finland

Part I

MODELING OF THE MICROWORLD

Chapter 1

Microworld modeling in Vacuum and Gaseous Environments

Pierre, Lambert, and Stéphane Régnier

1.1 Introduction

1.1.1 Introduction on Microworld Modeling

This first part describes the physical models involved in the description of a micromanipulation task: adhesion, contact mechanics, surface forces, and scaling laws. The impact of surface roughness and liquid is discussed later on in Chapter 2.

The targeted readership of Chapters 1 and 2 is essentially composed of master's degree students and lecturers, Ph.D. students, and researchers to whom this contribution intends:

To give the theoretical background as far as the physics and scaling laws for micromanipulation are concernedTo propose design rules for micromanipulation tools and how to estimate the interaction force between a component and the related gripper or between a cantilever tip and a substrate

The goal of developing models may be questioned for many reasons:

The task is huge and the forces dominating at the micro- and nanoscale can only be modeled very partially: for example, some of them cannot be modeled in a quantitative way (e.g., hydrogen bonds) suitable for robotics purposes, most of the proposed models are only valid at equilibrium (at least all the models based on the derivation of surface or potential energies).The parameters involved in the existing models are sometimes impossible to know, such as, for example, the electrical charge distribution on a dielectric oxide layer.Maybe as a consequence of the previous reason—that is, a full characterization is impossible—the micro- and nanoscale specifically suffer from a very large experimental dispersion, which makes the model refinements questionable. According to own experience, experimental results are difficult to keep within a few tens of a percent error interval. Yang and Lin (93) recently write that the measurements usually show poor reproducibility, suggesting that the major causes of irreproducibility can be roughness and heterogeneity of the probe surface and sample.

Nevertheless the use of—even basic—models helps the microrobotician to get into the nonintuitive physics dominating the microworld—mainly adhesion-related instabilities such as pull-in and pull-out—to give an explicating scheme of the experiments—what is the role of humidity? what is the influence of the coatings—to design at best grippers and tools on a comparative way—no matter the exact value of the force; but a geometries comparison leads to the best design. These advantages will be detailed later on.

Classical adhesion models (20, 41, 67) usually proposed to study adhesion in micromanipulation or atomic force microscopy (AFM) are based on the elastic deformation of two antagonist solids (microcomponent/gripper in micromanipulation, cantilever tip/substrate in AFM). This part will introduce models that are now well known, but they will be introduced in the framework of microassembly. Modern models will refer to recent developments and/or recent papers. The theoretical background proposed in this part aims at detailing: