For the fabrication of many electronic devices such as displays or radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, there is a need to distribute functional elements such as integrated circuit chips across large area substrates. The manufacturing of these devices is moving toward using a roll-to-roll processing. In many cases, the majority of the substrate area will not contain active circuitry or functional elements and the functional elements will occupy only a small fraction of the substrates' active areas. Functional elements are typically deposited into a substrate using pick-and-place or a fluidic-self assembly process. These processes are typically expensive. Because of the relatively sparse population of the functional elements on the substrates, it may be advantageous to assemble the functional elements in a different substrate and transfer to the substrates used for the devices.