Abstract
In this work, we report a new design for an electrostatically actuated microgripper with a post-assembly self-locking mechanism. The microgripper arms are driven by rotary comb actuators, enabling the microgripper to grip objects of any size from 0 to 100 μm. The post-assembly mechanism is driven by elastic deformation energy and static electricity to produce self-locking and releasing actions. The mechanism enables the microgripper arms to grip for long periods without continuously applying the external driving signal, which significantly reduces the effects and damage to the gripped objects caused by these external driving signals. The microgripper was fabricated using a Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) wafer with a 30 μm structural layer. Test results show that this gripper achieves a displacement of 100 μm with a driving voltage of 33 V, and a metal wire with a diameter of about 1.6 mil is successfully gripped to demonstrate the feasibility of this post-assembly self-locking mechanism.
Highlights
The microgripper is one of the key tools in performing the micromanipulation of micro-objects and biological tissues
We report a novel design for an electrostatic actuated microgripper with a post-assembly self-locking mechanism based on our previous work [14,15]
Their functions can be seen through the working process of the post-assembly structure: (1) The assistant hole is pushed forward with a probe to realize the occlusion between the ratchet teeth and grounding pads, the wedge block is automatically placed in the gap between the bottom of the main beam and the anchor, forced by the elastic energy stored in the elastic folded beams; (2) The main beam is rotated by inputting an external voltage in the stator and enlarging the gap, which makes the wedge block continue to move forward
Summary
The microgripper is one of the key tools in performing the micromanipulation of micro-objects and biological tissues. The actuating mechanism of all these microgrippers is based on electrostatic [1,8,10,11,12,13], thermal [2,3,4,5,6] or piezoelectric [7,9] effects and they need a continuous power supply during the process of gripping micro objects, which may affect or even damage the micro-objects in long-lasting manipulation experiments. The presented gripper can grip objects of any size from 0 to 100 μm and only needs a driving signal during the process of gripping and releasing micro-objects, which effectively avoids the influence of external driving signals on the gripped objects during long-lasting gripping experiments
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