Compliant Nano-Pliers as a Biomedical Tool at the Nanoscale: Design, Simulation and Fabrication

Alessio Buzzin; Serena Cupo; Ennio Giovine; Giampiero de Cesare; Nicola Pio Belfiore

doi:10.3390/mi11121087

Compliant Nano-Pliers as a Biomedical Tool at the Nanoscale: Design, Simulation and Fabrication

Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Dec 8;11(12):1087. doi: 10.3390/mi11121087.

Authors

Alessio Buzzin¹, Serena Cupo², Ennio Giovine³, Giampiero de Cesare¹, Nicola Pio Belfiore²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications, University of Rome La Sapienza, 00184 Rome, Italy.
² Department of Engineering, University of Roma Tre, 00146 Rome, Italy.
³ Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies, IFN-CNR, 00156 Rome, Italy.

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a multi-hinge, multi-DoF (Degrees of Freedom) nanogripper actuated by means of rotary comb drives and equipped with CSFH (Conjugate Surface Flexure Hinges), with the goal of performing complex in-plane movements at the nanoscale. The design approach, the simulation and a specifically conceived single-mask fabrication process are described in detail and the achieved results are illustrated by SEM images. The first prototype presents a total overall area of (550 × 550) μm2, an active clamping area of (2 × 4) μm2, 600 nm-wide circular curved beams as flexible hinges for its motion and an aspect ratio of about 2.5. These features allow the proposed system to grasp objects a few hundred nanometers in size.

Keywords: Lab-on-Chip; MEMS; NEMS; amorphous silicon; conjugate surfaces flexure hinge; four-bar linkage; nanogripper; rotary comb drive.