The static and dynamic response of SU-8 electrothermal microgrippers of varying thickness

Abstract

Publisher's copyright statement: NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in the Journal of microelectronic engineering. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be re ected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A de nitive version was subsequently published in the Journal of microelectronic engineering, 145, 2015, 10.1016/j.mee.2015.03.028 Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractThis work presents an investigation into the effect on dynamic response of SU-8 microgrippers due to varying thickness, and subsequent validation via COMSOL Multiphysics simulations and thermal camera profiling during actuation. The tweezer-like microgrippers can easily manipulate, with a high degree of control, cells and particles with diameters as small as 10 µm, without using an impractical operating voltage or generating excessive heat. However, in order to fully exploit the versatility of the devices, their response characteristics must be fully understood as material and/or dimension parameters change. Therefore an investigation took place to determine the effects of device thickness on functionality of the device, including the drive current required to actuate the gripper and the speed of actuation. Furthermore, an infrared camera was used to characterize the thermal response of the device. Finally, a simulation of the temperature profile and deflection dimension has been developed in order to verify the findings and further investigate and predict the effects of design variations.

Modeling and Design Enhancement of Electrothermal Actuators for Microgripping Applications

“…In other words, large output forces can be produced by applying relatively low voltages (below 10 V) [13,14]. Electrothermal actuators have been widely deployed for microgripping applications [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”

“…They include actuators and gripping arms made of thin silicon or stainless sheets, which are used to produce sufficient strength. Several research studies have reported on the design and performance analysis of microgrippers [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. The design aspects of these microstructures include the kinematic structure [18,24], the material selection [21,24], the actuation mechanism [16], the fabrication process [17,20], and the impact of the surrounding environment on their operation [21,22].…”

“…Several research studies have reported on the design and performance analysis of microgrippers [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. The design aspects of these microstructures include the kinematic structure [18,24], the material selection [21,24], the actuation mechanism [16], the fabrication process [17,20], and the impact of the surrounding environment on their operation [21,22]. For instance, Vargas-Chable et al [16] designed an unconventional microgripper comprising hot and cold arms of varying area instead of uniform area.…”

“…Therefore, we propose, in this work, a novel design for microgrippers that benefits from the presence of perforations in order to achieve superior performance in comparison to their conventional counterparts. Previous research works have only studied other geometrical and material aspects to enhance the design of microgrippers [16][17][18][19][20][21][24][25][26]28,31,32,42,43].…”