Abstract
The demand of miniaturized, accurate and robust micro-tools for minimally invasive surgery or in general for micro-manipulation, has grown tremendously in recent years. To meet this need, a new-concept comb-driven microgripper was designed and fabricated. Two microgripper prototypes differing for both the number of links and the number of conjugate surface flexure hinges are presented. Their design takes advantage of an innovative concept based on the pseudo-rigid body model, while the study of microgripper mechanical potentialities in different configurations is supported by finite elements’ simulations. These microgrippers, realized by the deep reactive-ion etching technology, are intended as micro-tools for tissue or cell manipulation and for minimally invasive surgery; therefore, their biocompatibility in terms of protein fouling was assessed. Serum albumin dissolved in phosphate buffer was selected to mimic the physiological environment and its adsorption on microgrippers was measured. The presented microgrippers demonstrated having great potential as biomedical tools, showing a modest propensity to adsorb proteins, independently from the protein concentration and time of incubation.
Highlights
The demand for micro-manipulation in biomedical applications increased during the last decades.Hundreds of different micro-systems have been reported in the literature [1,2], with different operational strategies [3] and being mainly dedicated to medical or biological applications
The first microgripper is composed of two links and two Conjugate Surface Flexure Hinges (CSFH), while the latter is more complex, having a pair of four-bar linkages and eight CSFHs
Both prototypes were fabricated and tested for their biocompatibility in terms of protein fouling, as a first step to evaluate their possible use as biomedical devices
Summary
The demand for micro-manipulation in biomedical applications increased during the last decades.Hundreds of different micro-systems have been reported in the literature [1,2], with different operational strategies [3] and being mainly dedicated to medical or biological applications. A few more examples of microgrippers are present in the literature, piezoelectric [5,6] or thermally [7,8] or even magnetically actuated [8,9,10] All these systems, present quite large dimensions and are not fully tested for working in a physiological environment, as required for biomedical applications. The development of new microsystems and, in particular, silicon microgrippers for handling cells or tissues at the microscale was pursued in this paper.
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