Author : Manpreet Kaur and Sandeep Dhariwal

Reported presently is an approach to determine the effect of different parameters on the performance of electrothermal microtweezers. Selection of actuation parameters has great influence on the response of the microtweezers. The present study investigates the influence of the actuation parameters on the response of microtweezers based on Taguchi method so as to obtain an optimum level for response parameter. Electrothermal actuation based microtweezer was simulated with different parameter combinations. It was found that that the young’s modulus is the most significant factor followed by thermal expansion coefficient for stress response, the thermal conductivity is the most significant factor for temperature response and thermal expansion coefficient is the most significant factor followed by thermal conductivity for displacement response. Data investigated in this paper can be used to specify actuation parameters for microtweezers.

Keywords: MEMS, Electrothermal microtweezer, Taguchi design of experiment, S/N ratio.

Article published in International Journal of Current  Engineering  and Technology, Vol.2,No.3 (Sept- 2012)