Development of a micromanipulator made of diamond having reversal mechanism

In this study we focus on diamond as a structural material for micromechanisms. Diamond is the hardest material on the earth, and has superior antifriction and anticorrosion characteristics. If diamond were applied to a micromechanism, an almost maintenance-free component which requires only a few component exchanges could be fabricated. In addition, since it has a superior anticorrosion characteristic, it can be used in chemical substances and organic tissue; thus, micromechanical components made of diamond have many advantages. Furthermore, when diamond is applied to a micromanipulator, we can expect accurate gripping to be realized because its deformation is small. We have already developed a diamond end effector for micromanipulators, and have obtained several promising results. In this study, we added a reversal mechanism to the positioning unit of this micromanipulator to increase efficiency in assembly tasks, and modified the design of the diamond end effector accordingly. Major modifications were examined through finite element analysis of fabricated shapes and amount of movement. A modified effector was experimentally fabricated based on the analytical results, and its features were examined experimentally. The starting material was 2-μm-thick flat-plate diamond, whichwas processed by laser into a designated shape. A shape-memory-alloy actuator which memorizes the linear shape was used to realize a driving amount larger than those of electrostatic actuators and piezoelectric devices.