Dielectrophoresis and electrohydrodynamics-mediated fluidic assembly of silicon resistors

In this letter, we present techniques, utilizing dielectrophoresis and electrohydrodynamics, which can be used for assembling single-crystal silicon devices suspended in a solution onto a binding site on a heterogeneous substrate. Silicon resistors with gold/chromium layers located at the end of the resistors and silicon blocks without metal were fabricated on bonded and etched-backed silicon-on-insulator wafers and successfully released into deionized water. The devices were subsequently assembled on a different substrate at specific binding sites by dielectrophoretic and electrohydrodynamic forces with submicron precision. Current-voltage measurements of the assembled resistors exhibited low contact resistance after the solution was completely evaporated and the contacts were annealed. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.