Optimized design of Au-polysilicon electrothermal microgripper for handling micro objects

Manipulation of micro objects, by far is considered to be the most challenging task in modern engineering. This field has received much attention recently and tends to become one of the major topics of research. This paper presents design of a 3-dimensional microelectromechanical systems (3-D MEMS) model of an electrothermally actuated microgripper. Out of all the existing principles, thermo-electric actuation yields maximum efficiency in terms of large displacements at low voltages. The analysis has been performed using the Finite Element Method (FEM) of COMSOL Multiphysics version 4.4. The model present here has been subjected to numerous dimensional, structural and material variations after which it has been optimized to obtain the best possible output. Finally, the various parametric studies such as total displacement, stress and current density are carried out by linear variation of the driving voltage from 0–3 Volts.