Abstract
Novel self-assembly process using electrostatic adhesion energy induced by contact electrification phenomenon was proposed and its analytical formulation was performed for the first time. The contact electrification, which is observed when two different metals, such as platinum (Pt) - Silver (Ag) are contacted, was utilized to align a face of a component on a substrate. First, two types of 1 mm square silicon components with thickness of 0.5 mm coated with Pt or Ag and R substrate were prepared. Adhesion energies for two different metal pairs (Pt-Ag and Pt-Pt) were measured by measuring the vibration energy to separate the components from the vibrating substrate. The experimental results indicated the adhesion energy between Pt-Pt was 0.57 nJ, and Pt-Ag was 1.4 nJ on an average. Next, the face alignment experiment was carried out by vibrating the substrate on which 20 components with thickness of 0.2 mm were placed. The front and back face of the components were coated with R and Ag, respectively and they were split into half of R face up and the other half of Ag face up. We could get 83 % components were aligned as R face up. Finally, modeling of the proposed self-assembly process was performed based on the concept of chemical reaction formula. The forward and reverse reaction rates of the face alignment process were determined by fitting the foumula to the experimental data.
