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A multipurpose electrothermal microgripper for biological micro-manipulation

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Abstract

A novel electrothermal SU-8 microgripper with a large gripping scope and multipurpose jaws is designed and ANSYS software was used to check its performances. Then, the microgripper is fabricated by a simple UV-LIGA process followed by two performance tests. The static test results show that with only 195 mV, 111.1 mW and 53.7 °C temperature increase at the actuator, a 71.5 μm jaws gap change is obtained. The dynamic response test result shows that driven by different step-type voltages, the response time is about 0.23 s during both closing and opening jaws process. Finally, two micro-manipulation sequences are carried. The experimental results show that due to the large gripping scope and the multipurpose jaws, the microgripper can be used as a multipurpose manipulator for biological micro-manipulations including the manipulation of micro blood vessel and the operation of small size cell, such as cyanobacteria cell.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant 2011CB302101 and Grant 2011CB302105) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant DUT10ZD104) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Correspondence to Jinkui Chu.

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Zhang, R., Chu, J., Wang, H. et al. A multipurpose electrothermal microgripper for biological micro-manipulation. Microsyst Technol 19, 89–97 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-012-1567-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-012-1567-0

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