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Abstract
This paper presents the theoretical thermal-mechanical modeling and parameter analyses of a novel three-dimensional (3D) electrothermal microgripper with three fingers. Each finger of the microgripper is composed of a bi-directional Z-shaped electrothermal actuator and a 3D U-shaped electrothermal actuator. The bi-directional Z-shaped electrothermal actuator provides the rectilinear motion in two directions. The novel 3D U-shaped electrothermal actuator offers motion with two degrees of freedom (DOFs) in the plane perpendicular to the movement of the Z-shaped actuator. As a result, each finger possesses 3D mobilities with three DOFs. Each beam of the actuators is heated externally with polyimide films. In this work, the static theoretical thermal-mechanical model of the 3D U-shaped electrothermal actuator is established. Finite-element analyses and experimental tests are conducted to verify and validate the model. With this model, parameter analyses are carried out to provide insight and guidance on further improving the 3D U-shaped actuator. Furthermore, a group of micro-manipulation experiments are conducted to demonstrate the flexibility and versality of the 3D microgripper on manipulate different types of small/micro-objects.
Highlights
Micro-manipulation techniques have a variety of potential applications such as microassembly [1,2,3], micro-injection [4,5,6], Pharmaceutical Development [7,8], artificial insemination [9,10] and micro-surgery [11,12,13], etc
The detailed structure of the 3D U-shaped electrothermal actuators is depicted in Figure 3a,b
When a voltage is applied to the polyimide film which is intimately sticked to the high electric conductivity of the beam, which will result in the short circuit if a voltage is directly applied to the actuator beam
Summary
Micro-manipulation techniques have a variety of potential applications such as microassembly [1,2,3], micro-injection [4,5,6], Pharmaceutical Development [7,8], artificial insemination [9,10] and micro-surgery [11,12,13], etc. Many research efforts have been made towards the statics theoretical modeling of the electrothermal micro-actuators and microgrippers [33,34]. The bi-directional Z-shaped actuator was proposed in published papers and has potential applications where bidirectional actuation is required such as micro-stages [39] Another important difference about the 3D U-shaped actuator is that the four pairs of beams employed in this work, instead of four single beams, are arranged on the four sides of a rectangular base. For the design and control of the 3D microgripper, the static thermal-mechanical model of the 3D U-shaped actuator is established, and is verified via finite element simulations and further validated with experimental testing. Micro-manipulations of a micro ball and a zebrafish embryo are conducted including picking, holding, lifting, 3D orientating, and releasing operations
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