A Design and Manufacturing of Two Types of Micro-grippers using Piezoelectric Actuators for the Micromanipulation

미세 조작을 위한 압전 구동 집게의 설계 및 제작

In this study, two new types of micro-grippers in which micro-fingers are actuated by piezoelectric multi-layer benders and stacks are introduced for the manipulation of micrometer-sized objects. First, we constructed a 3-chopstick-mechanism tungsten gripper, which is composed of three chopsticks: two are designed to grip micro-objects, and tile third is used to help grasp and release the objects through overcoming especially electrostatic force among some surface effects including electrostatic, van der Waals forces and surface tension. Second, a 2-chopstick-mechanism silicon micro-gripper that uses an integrated force sensor to control the gripping force was developed. The micro-gripper is composed of a piezoelectric multilayer bender for actuating the gripper fingers, silicon fingertips fabricated by use of silicon-based micromachining, and supplementary supports. The micro-gripper is referred to as a hybrid-type micro-gripper because it is composed of two main components; micro-fingertips fabricated using micromachining technology to integrate a very sensitive force sensor for measuring the gripping force, and piezoelectric gripper finger actuators that are capable of large gripping forces and moving strokes. The gripping force signal was found to have a sensitivity of 667 N/V. To the design of each of components of both of the grippers. a systematic design approach was applied, which made it possible to establish the functional requirements and design parameters of the micro-grippers. The micro-grippers were installed on a manual manipulator to assess its performance in tasks such as moving micro-objects from one position to a desired position. The experiment showed that the micro-grippers function effectively.