A New Manipulating Method of Metal Micro-Components Based on Electrochemistry

This article presents a new manipulating method of metal micro-components based on electrochemistry aiming at the problems of inaccurate release and easy damage to manipulated objects by conventional micro gripping tools and vacuum adsorption tools. This method uses a small-sized micropipette to manipulate large-sized metal micro-components. The reliable picking up is achieved by forming a strong chemical bond between the small-sized pipette and the manipulation object. The accurate and non-destructive release is achieved by converting the chemical bonding force into a more easily overcome capillary force through electrolysis. The electrochemical and the force models of the metal microcomponents based on electrochemistry are simulated by COMSOL and Abaqus, to obtain optimal electrochemical parameters and manipulation strategies. The experiments of picking up and releasing were performed to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. The results show that this method can enable reliable and accurate manipulation of large-size objects with small-size tools and have a high success rate and efficiency.