Design and simulation study for an electro-thermally actuated micromanipulator

Author

Voicu, Rodica ; Tibeica, Catalin ; Muller, Raluca

Author_Institution

Nat. Inst. for Res. & Dev. in Microtechnologies, IMT-Bucharest, Bucharest

fYear

2009

fDate

26-29 April 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

5

Abstract

New design for an electro-thermally actuated SU-8 polymeric microgrippers is presented, simulated and analyzed. The electro-thermally driven microgrippers were studied using computer simulations (the Finite Element Method using CoventorWare software tool). Numerical simulations - coupled electro-thermo-mechanical simulations - were performed. We investigated the influence of the temperatures achieved in the microgripers´ arms and the deflections of the tips, as functions of the applied voltages. A numerical simulation of the electro-thermo-mechanical behaviour of the microgrippers has been done and an evaluation of the results obtained from simulations (using FEM) was performed. The simulations results show a good mechanical behaviour of the micromanipulator in order to operate in air.

Keywords

electric actuators; finite element analysis; grippers; micromanipulators; thermoelectric devices; CoventorWare software tool; SU-8 polymeric microgrippers; electro-thermally actuated micromanipulator; electro-thermo-mechanical behaviour; finite element method; Analytical models; Computational modeling; Computer simulation; Finite element methods; Grippers; Micromanipulators; Numerical simulation; Polymers; Software tools; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Thermal, Mechanical and Multi-Physics simulation and Experiments in Microelectronics and Microsystems, 2009. EuroSimE 2009. 10th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Delft

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-4160-0

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4244-4161-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ESIME.2009.4938477

Filename

4938477