Force Controlled Manipulation of Biological Cells Using a Monolithic MEMS Based Nano-Micro Gripper

Nano-micro grippers are able to pick-transport-place the micro or nanometer–sized materials, such as manipulation of biological cells or DNA molecules in a liquid medium. This paper proposes a novel monolithic nano-micro gripper structure with two axis piezoresistive force sensor which its resolution is under nanoNewton. The results of the study have been obtained by the simulation of the proposed gripper structure in Matlab software. Motion of the gripper arm is produced by a voice coil actuator. The behavior of the cell has been derived using the assumptions in the literatures. Moreover, two simple PID controllers, one for control of the gripper motion and another for control of the force during manipulation of a biologic cell, have been implemented. Although the proposed gripper has not been fabricated, since the geometrical dimensions of the proposed gripper is the same as previously developed electrothermally actuated micro-nano gripper, the results of force control have been also compared with it. The simulated results with the very simple PID force controller which has a more rapid response than previously developed electrothermally actuated micro-nano gripper show that the designed gripper has the potential to be considered and fabricated for manipulation of biological cells in the future.Copyright © 2012 by ASME