The design and fabrication of a movable O-shape micro-clamper

Abstract

With the demanding of handling micro objects, the development of micro-clamper has emerged. Here an electro-thermally driven micro-clamper with adjustable vertical position is proposed. This micro-clamper is consisted of an adjusting unit and a clamping unit. The adjusting unit formed by four bimorph beams in the longitudinal direction can move the clamping unit vertically. The clamping unit formed by a pair of bimorph beams at the end of the adjusting unit is in the transversal direction. Due to the residual stress difference in the bimorph beam, at initial state, the adjusting unit in the longitudinal direction will bend upward, and the other two bimorph beams will also curl up to become a clamper. When the adjusting unit is heated, the whole device will move downwards. When the clamper unit is heated, two sides of the clamping unit will open up to a waiting state. It is hoped that the capability of adjusting the clamper in vertical position will provide larger operating range for the micro-clamper. The micro-clamper proposed here is batch-fabricated by surface micromachining. The testing results show that the adjusting unit can produce 8 mum downward displacement at input voltage of 2V and the clamping unit can be fully flattened around 5 V.