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Thermally driven MEMS fiber-grippers

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Abstract

We investigate mechanical tangling for adhesion of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) to unconventional carrier materials for assembly of highly porous, fiber-based electronics. Adhesion plays a crucial role in fabrication, but is a difficult task to realize even on continuous thin films of soft materials like silicone and polyimide. Adhesion becomes more challenging on discontinuous surfaces like fabric meshes, yet these substrates will expand the MEMS universe to new materials. Operations that are challenging on conventional circuit boards, like passage of electronic contacts and fluids from one side of a mesh to the other, are simpler with a mesh. In this work, microgripper arrays are realized by microfabrication and release of strained metal-oxide bilayers. This paper describes a process that wraps a MEMS gripper around a conductive fiber and reverses the process using electric current to open the gripper. The gripper’s electrical resistance serves as a self-temperature sensor over the 20–500 °C range. Beyond their potential for adhering MEMS to fabrics and to flexible/stretchable substrates that are incompatible with or resistant to adhesives, these microgrippers illustrate how MEMS-based microrobots might interact with small-scale (< 200 μm diameter) soft and biological structures that require sub-millinewton contact forces. The key contribution of this paper over our earlier work is demonstrating the grippers’ temperature-dependent resistance, which offers a route to improved control of the gripper state.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by National Science Foundation Award 1849213, “RII Track-1: Kentucky Advanced Manufacturing Partnership for Enhanced Robotics and Structures” and National Science Foundation Award 1950137, “REU SITE: Interdisciplinary Micro/Nano/Additive Manufacturing Program Addressing Challenges Today - Next Generation (IMPACT-NG). The authors would like to acknowledge Julia Aebersold of the University of Louisville Micro/Nano Technology Center, for expertise on wire bonding devices.

Funding

This project was supported by National Science Foundation Award 1849213, “RII Track-1: Kentucky Advanced Manufacturing Partnership for Enhanced Robotics and Structures” and National Science Foundation Award 1950137, “REU SITE: Interdisciplinary Micro/Nano/Additive Manufacturing Program Addressing Challenges Today - Next Generation (IMPACT-NG).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Mohammad S. Islam, Sushmita Challa, Danming Wei & Cindy K. Harnett

  2. Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    M. H. Yacin

  3. Computer Science Engineering, Gayatri Vidya Parishad, Visakhapatnam, India

    Sruthi S. Vankayala

  4. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Nathan Song

  5. Micro-Nano Technology Center, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA

    Jasmin Beharic

Authors
  1. Mohammad S. Islam
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  2. Sushmita Challa
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  4. Sruthi S. Vankayala
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  5. Nathan Song
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  6. Danming Wei
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  7. Jasmin Beharic
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  8. Cindy K. Harnett
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Contributions

M.S.I. and S.C. wrote the main manuscript text and generated images for figures. M.S.I. and M.H.Y. designed, fabricated, and collected data on the microgrippers under the guidance of C.K.H. N.S. and D.W. fabricated and collected data by testing the cantilevers. S.S.V. and S.C. prepared Table 2; Fig. 13 (a, b). N.S. prepared Fig. 8. Finite Elements Analysis was performed by M.S.I. S.C. and M.S.I. prepared Tables 3 and 4. J.B. assisted in the microfabrication processing of the MEMS devices. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mohammad S. Islam.

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Islam, M.S., Challa, S., Yacin, M.H. et al. Thermally driven MEMS fiber-grippers. J Micro-Bio Robot 18, 89–100 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12213-023-00161-w

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