DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF ELECTROTHERMAL

NICKEL MICROGRIPPER

CHU Jinkui^{1, 2}  HAO Xiuchun^{1, 2}  WANG Liding^{1, 2}

(1. Key Laboratory for Micro/Nano Technology and System of Liaoning
Province, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116023;
2. Key Laboratory for Dalian University of Technol-ogy Precision & Non-traditional
Machining of Ministry of Education, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116023 )

Abstract: In order to bring about industrialization in micro-electro-mechanical systems(MEMS), the microgripper applied in microoperation and microassembly is developed. It is based on electrothermal principle. V-shaped beam array elec-trothermal microactuators is adoped to generate displacement for microgriper,and the microgripper is designed by topology optimization. Niclel is selected for fabricating the electrother-mal microgripper,and UV-LIGA process is used to fabricate the electrothermal microgripper. The optimized parameters for SU-8 mold are obtained through orthogonal experiment. All factors influenced process are discussed in detail and the re-solved methods are given. And an electrothermal nickel micro-griper with whole dimension in a millimeter magnitude, depth 30 μm and minimum character size 10 μm. Final dynamic performance of the nickel microgripper is experimented within 0~2.5 V range. The maximum tweezing displacements of up to 67 μm is recorded for this nickel microgripper, and the maximum clamping force can reach 0.8 N. This microgeipper can satisfy microoperation in MEMS.

Key words: Microgripper UV-LIGA Electroplating

CLC No: TH162

国家自然科学基金重点资助项目(50535030, 50475153). Received 20060728, received in revised form 20061229