A novel SU-8 electrothermal microgripper based on the type synthesis of the kinematic chain method and the stiffness matrix method

Abstract

This paper presents a new systematic design and optimization procedure used for the microgrippers driven by a chevron electrothermal actuator. The procedure includes three steps: first, a suitable rigid-body gripper mechanism is selected using the type synthesis of the kinematic chain method; then, the rigid-body mechanism is transferred into a compliant microgripper; finally, by the stiffness matrix model and the genetic algorithm, a geometry parametric optimization with the high output stiffness objective is carried out. Using this procedure, a novel SU-8 electrothermal microgripper is obtained. According to the FEM simulation, the microgripper meets the design requirements and satisfies the constraints. To eliminate the out-of-plane actuation, a novel processing technology is implemented to fabricate the microgripper with a sandwich structure actuator. The experimental results demonstrate that a jaw gap change of 107.5 µm requires only 73.6 mV, 25.61 mW and only 44.92 °C temperature increase at the actuator and the out-of-plane actuation is almost eliminated. A micromanipulation of a micro blood vessel specimen and a micro-assembly for micro-tensile testing studies of fine hair are demonstrated. Hence, the design procedure is valid to generate novel compliant micro mechanisms. The fabrication process can be used in the fabrication of other SU-8 MEMS devices actuated by the electrothermal actuator.