| Physical pick-and-place promises specificity, precision, and programmed motion, a feature making microrobotic manipulation amenable to automation for the construction of microsystems. Despite the significant progress made, a long-standing difficulty is the release of micro objects from the end effector due to strong adhesion forces at the micro scale.;To further miniaturize the devices for nanomanipulation, a novel fabrication process was developed. Through the manipulation of 100nm gold nano-particles inside a scanning electron microscope (SEM), preliminary demonstrations were made.;This research focuses on the development of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based microgrippers that integrate an active release mechanism for pick-and-release micromanipulation. The performance was experimentally quantified through the manipulation of 7.5--10.9microm glass spheres, and for the first time, achieves a 100% success rate in release (based on 700 trials) and a release accuracy of 0.45+/-0.24microm. Example patterns were then constructed through automated microrobotic pick-and-place of microspheres, achieving a speed of 6sec/sphere. |
