Design and Analysis of Electro thermally Actuated Microgripper

Abstract

Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology offers the opportunity to produce mechanical, electromechanical, and electrochemical devices with the same unprecedented levels of miniaturization, and functionality as modern Very Large Scale Integrated (VLSI). Micro grippers are used for manipulation of biological samples, for assembling of micro parts and for micro assembly. Electro thermal micro grippers are promising tools enabling assembly and manipulation of nano-scale structures. In this paper MEMS based U-shaped thermally actuated micro-gripper is designed using two hot and one cold arm type thermal actuator. Then the effect of coefficient of thermal expansion and poisson’s ratio on stress for thermally actuated micro-gripper is analyzed and the results shows that the stress increases with the increase in coefficient of thermal expansion and the stress decreases with the increase in poisson’s ratio.