Design, implementation and testing of electrostatic SOI MUMPs based microgripper

This paper presents a detail modeling, finite element analysis and testing results of MEMS based electrostatically actuated microgripper. Interdigitated lateral comb pairs have been used to actuate the microgripper. The microgripper is optimized using standard SOI-MUMPs technology in L-Edit of MEMS-Pro with dual jaws actuation at low voltages. Coupled electromechanical finite element analysis performed in COVENTOR-WARE shows total displacement of 15.5 mu m at jaws tip at 50 V, which is quite comparable to experimental result of 17 mu m displacement at the tip of gripper jaw for the same voltage. Micromanipulation experiments have successfully demonstrated the gripping, holding micro-objects between 53 and 70 mu m in size. The simulated model is used to study detail profile of Von Mises stresses and deformations in the model. It is noted that maximum stress in microgripper is 200 MPa which is much smaller than yield stress of 7 GPa. The slight difference between finite element analysis and experimental results is because of small variations in process material parameters. The total size of gripper is 5.03 x 6.5 mm(2).