Investigations into Capillary Forces and Capillary Rise in a Three-Finger Microgripper and a Plate: Numerical Simulations and Experimental Validation

The assembly and position adjustment of micro-components have wide applications in micro-electromechanical systems, wafer packaging and biomedicine. However, current single-finger microgrippers only allow for the pickup and release of micro-components. In the present study, a three-finger capillary microgripper was developed to pick up, release and adjust the position of micro-components. The capillary force and the capillary rise generated by the capillary bridge were investigated by simulation and experiments. A simulation model was set up by the minimum energy method. On the established experimental platform, capillary forces were measured at different separation distances. When the volume was 0.9 μL, the maximum capillary forces gained from the capillary bridge model and experiments were 95.2 μN and 96.0 μN, respectively. A comparison of the capillary bridge models and the experimental results of the capillary forces demonstrate the reliability of the capillary bridge models. The influences of various parameters were investigated in detail by the capillary bridge model. The results demonstrate that when the side of the probe is hydrophilic, the variations in the capillary force with various factors such as separation distance and capillary bridge volume is non-monotonic, which is caused by the restriction of the probe edge.