LAUSR

This paper presents design analysis of an SU-8 based 2-DoF electrothermal microgripper by developing a closed-form analytical model. The analytical model considers both the electro-thermal and thermo-mechanical domains and relates the applied actuation voltage to the microgripper jaw tip displacement and gripping force on micro-object. The results obtained using developed analytical model are verified through coupled field finite element method simulations. In the microgripper design, a modified parallelogram based mechanism, consisting of elliptical hinges, is implemented to achieve displacement amplification and pure translational motion at the microgripper jaws. The proposed microgripper design allows to minimize the temperature at the jaws, thus making it suitable for the manipulation of biological materials for biomedical applications. For the proposed microgripper design, a single jaw tip displacement of 11 µm is obtained at an actuation voltage of 80 mV with temperature increase of only 2–3 °C from ambient at the jaw.