An Electrothermal Actuator With Two Degrees of Freedom Serving as the Arm of a MEMS Gripper

Author

Dian-Sheng Chen ; Po-Fan Yeh ; Yu-fan Chen ; Chun-Wei Tsai ; Chun-Yi Yin ; Ren-Jie Lai ; Jui-che Tsai

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan

Volume

61

Issue

10

fYear

2014

fDate

Oct. 2014

Firstpage

5465

Lastpage

5471

Abstract

In this paper, we present an electrothermal actuator with two degrees of freedom that can achieve independent in-plane and out-of-plane motions. The device is fabricated with the MetalMUMPs, which offers silicon nitride, polysilicon, and nickel as the major structural materials. The electrothermal actuator achieves large movement. The in-plane tip displacement is 82 μm at 0.039 W. The out-of-plane swing of the tip is 18 μm as the applied voltage varies from 0 to 90 V (0 to 0.36 W) and vice versa. A versatile microelectromechanical systems gripper that is capable of 2-D manipulation can be constructed with two such actuators, each of which serves as the gripper arm.

Keywords

grippers; microactuators; 2D manipulation; MEMS gripper; MetalMUMP; electrothermal actuator; gripper arm; in-plane motion; in-plane tip displacement; microelectromechanical systems gripper; nickel; out-of-plane motion; polysilicon; power 0 W to 0.36 W; silicon nitride; size 82 mum; structural materials; voltage 0 V to 90 V; Actuators; Grippers; Heating; Micromechanical devices; Nickel; Silicon; Degrees of freedom; MEMS gripper; degrees of freedom; electrothermal actuator; in-plane; microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gripper; out-of-plane;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0278-0046

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TIE.2013.2293693

Filename

6678656