Numerical Study of Electrothermal Microgripper Based on Serpentine Structure

Microgripers are highly used in automatic manipulation microassembly and micro robotics. The device is employed to do a sensing work, which should result a high force with large jaw displacement. The device contains a Piezoresistive force sensing cantilever beam combined with an electrothermal microactuator. The microgripper is capable of providing 32 μm jaw displacement with low power consumption about 115 mW to manipulate micro-objects with diameters between 8 and 40 μm. For such a device, the high temperature actuation should be reduced to reach the desired temperature. In this research, carbon nanotubes (CNT) are introduced as micro fins, applicable to the cantilevers, to efficiently remove the produced high temperature from the cantilevers tip. The proposed microgripper is simulated and the results are presented and discussed. It is shown that with employing CNT micro fins, the temperature reduces to 52.56 oC. the latter shows an improvement compare to other method.

Keywords:

Microgripper , Electrothermal , Carbon nanotube (CNT) , Micro fin