Towards printing as an electronics manufacturing method: Micro-scale chiplet position control

We address the problem of position control of micro-chips (chiplets) immersed in dielectric fluid. An electric field, shaped by controlling the voltages of spiral shaped electrodes, is used to reliably and accurately transport and position chiplets using dielectrophoretic forces. A lumped, capacitive based (nonlinear) motion model is used to generate an open loop control policy. The open loop policy is generated using a one step model predictive control approach. By exploiting the spatial symmetry and periodicity of the open loop control solution, a real-time control scheme is designed by applying simple algebraic operations to a base function defined on a finite domain. The chiplet position is tracked using image processing algorithms. We demonstrate the validity of our approach by describing an experimental result, where real-time control is used to move a chiplet for 1000µm in a controlled manner.