Design and test of reliable high strength ingressive polycrystalline silicon microgripper arrays

We present the design and validation of a micromachined gripper array that enables reliable transmission of forces of at least 14 mN. The gripper is constructed with polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon), a brittle material, and is compatible with polysilicon surface micromachining. Two ingressive snap-and-lock array designs are presented. After developing design guidelines, it is shown that the first gripper array is functional. However, a risk remains that the gripper array rather than the tensile bar that it grips in its intended application fails. Therefore, an improved geometry is designed and it is shown that it is robust with respect to failure. Scanning confocal Raman imaging directly confirms that the local peak tensile stresses in the robust gripper array are approximately 50% of the lower bound material strength, and also resolves a 25% stress variation across the array.