New Yθ compliant micromanipulator with ultra-large workspace for biomanipulations

In recent years, biological micromanipulations emerge as a promising application in the micro/nano technology. Manual manipulation tends to have disadvantages of low success rate and low repeatability. In order to perform the robotic biomanipulations, a novel flexure-based Yθ large-workspace micromanipulator with differential lever displacement amplifier (DLDA) is proposed in this paper. After a series of optimal designs and mechanism modeling, the mechanism performance of the proposed micromanipulator is validated by using the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) method. Finally, the proposed micromanipulator is fabricated and close-loop experimentally tested to make a prototype characterization. In this study, two piezoelectric (PZT) actuators P-216.80 with close-loop travel 120 μm and close-loop resolution 2.4 nm are employed, the simulation and experimentally results indicate that the mechanism displacement amplification ratio can reach up to 31, thus the maximum output displacement can achieve around 3.3 mm, the rotation angle can reach up to around 26.5°. Both theoretical derivation and prototype test results well testify the proposed mechanism possesses satisfactory performance to perform the practical biomanipulations.