Design and Analysis of a Light-Operated Microgripper Using an Opto-Electrostatic Repulsive Combined Actuator

The microgripper plays a critical role in micromanipulation systems; however, the handling accuracy of traditional driving microgrippers suffers from external vibration due to requiring connecting wires for an external power supply. By contrast, light driving has many advantages of remote non-contact manipulation, wireless energy transfer and no induced electromagnetic noise. In this study, an opto-electrostatic repulsive combined driving mechanism was proposed, and then a novel light-operated microgripper that used an opto-electrostatic repulsive actuator was designed and simulated. The static performance of the light-operated microgripper was investigated via simulation and numeric calculation results. The overall size of the microgripper was 1.3 mm × 0.7 mm × 1.027 mm, and the micro-objects ranging from 0 to 1000 μm in size could be manipulated and held using light. The proposed microgripper had many outstanding characteristics, such as a larger stroke, high response speed, remote non-contact manipulation, easy to integrate with an integrated circuit (IC) process and free from external interference. In addition, the dynamic control experiments of the photo-induced voltage of the PbLaZrTi (PLZT) ceramic were carried out, which shows that a stable electrical field could be obtained using the effective control methods that were developed.