Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) are miniaturized sensor and actuator systems built with mechanical and/or electrical components. Applications for MEMS devices range from optical switches to biomedical devices and microrobots. Fabrication of MEMS is dominated by bulk micromachining techniques with an additional enhancement of wafer-to-wafer bonding. These combined techniques use lithography to selectively etch substrates and bond dissimilar types of parts and substrates together to fabricate MEMS parts. However, the difficulties in compatible process requirements for the different technologies, e.g. CMOS, gallium arsenide, polysilicon, or silicon nitride, has resulted in the design and implementation of hybrid MEMS devices, those devices that use more than one technology. This paper presents a starting point to explore the possibilities of assembling hybrid MEMS devices on a wafer-to-wafer scale. Assembly will be broken down into two categories, serial and parallel, that will be discussed in two scenerios and considered with regard to gripper technologies and possible applications. This new assembly approach is a topic for the Design for Manufacturing community to consider for translating their knowledge of macroscopic assembly into the micro domain. We believe that a successful investigation into the tolerances and techniques required for the massively parallel assembly of MEMS scale devices will result in a smaller number of fabrication steps and a high yield of increasingly complex MEMS devices.
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