A novel SU-8 microgripper with external actuator for biological cells manipulation

Specification and target impose several limitations and difficulties in micro manipulators design. These obstacles are even more important when the target of microgripping is biological cells. Even though a variety of designs and solutions has been proposed in the literature, the problems of temperature at microgripper tip and applied voltage in gripping jaws are still unsolved. In this paper a new approach to eliminate this kind of problems in biological cells manipulation is introduced. The proposed kinematics is externally actuated and an optimization procedure based on FEM simulations has been performed to improve the micro gripper design. Some considerations on fabrication process show that the new approach can sensitively decrease the cost and time of fabrication processes, as well as the complexity of the technologies involved.