A multipurpose electrothermal microgripper for biological micro-manipulation

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.