Fabrication of a microcoil through parallel microassembly

This paper presents the fabrication of a three-dimensional microcoil through the technique of microassembly. The microcoil design is comprised of nine out-of-plane micro-sized windings. Each winding was assembled onto the base substrate orthogonally by a robotic manipulator through microassembly. In contrast to the conventional serial pick-and-place microassembly, this work incorporated the approach of parallel microassembly to grasp and assemble three windings onto the base substrate simultaneously for increased productivity. In addition, a vision-based algorithm was developed to automate the parallel grasping process of three windings. This algorithm utilized well-defined templates to provide high-precision position and orientation evaluations for the micro-sized components. The performance of the microcoil fabrication process was evaluated and discussed. To establish better electrical contact between the windings and the base substrate, conductive adhesive was introduced in the assembly process and the electrical properties of the assembled microcoil structure were examined.