Design, manufacture, and clamping operation of a 4-DOF piezoelectric micro-gripper

To improve the operational flexibility of the piezoelectric microgripper, a new four-degree-of-freedom piezoelectric microgripper was designed and fabricated. The clamp fingers can move both along the clamping direction and along its vertical direction. Also, clamping experiments were conducted on a φ 300 μm × 20 mm micro-shaft. Based on the transverse inverse piezoelectric effect of two groups of vertical intersections, a new configuration of a four-degree-of-freedom piezoelectric micro-gripper is designed. It can produce micro-displacement along the clamping direction and vertical clamping direction simultaneously. According to the Euler-Bernoulli beam equation, the Lagrangian function method and Hamilton variational principle are used to model the four-degree-of-freedom piezoelectric micro-gripper. Then, based on the optimization of the geometric parameters of the fingers, the static and dynamic characteristics of the microgripper are analyzed by the finite element method. After that, the micro-gripper is made using lithography, gluing, and laser cutting. Finally, the piezoelectric microgripper's static and dynamic characteristics and the micro-shaft's clamping operation are tested by experiments. The experimental results show that the maximum displacement, response time, and natural frequency of the designed micro-gripper along and perpendicular to the clamping direction agree well with the finite element simulation. The designed microgripper exhibits a promising prospect in practical micromanipulation applications.