In order to realize a fluidic soft microactuator with a built-in control valve, this paper presents a cantilever type flexible electro-rheological microvalve (FERV) with a hybrid flow channel structure made from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and SU-8. The hybrid structure provides high flexibility with the PDMS structure while only slight expansion occurred under high pressure with the SU-8 structure. In addition, its flexible electrodes are realized by UV-curable PEDOT:PSS (poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate) that is a flexible conductive polymer and can be fabricated by simple and fast fabrication process without high-cost equipment. The proposed FERV can control the flow rate of the electro-rheological fluid (ERF) through the flow channel by changing its apparent viscosity with an applied electric field. FEM simulations were conducted to demonstrate the flexural rigidity of the designed FERV and compare it with the previous FERVs. Developing micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) processes using the photolithography technique, the FERV was successfully fabricated and its characteristics were experimentally clarified. The results showed the feasibility of the proposed FERV in the soft microactuator application.
相似文献This paper presents a novel bending microactuator with integrated flexible electro-rheological microvalves (FERVs) using an alternating pressure source for multi-actuator systems. The proposed bending microactuator is a fluidic elastomer actuator that has two fluidic chambers inside and can bend with the chamber pressures controlled by the integrated FERVs, each of which has a flexible structure and changes a flow of electro-rheological fluid (ERF) through its viscosity change due to an applied electric field. The utilization of the FERVs in the actuator reduces the overall size, while the benefits of the alternating pressure source are reduction of the number of pipes in a multi-actuator system and removal of the fluid reservoir tank. The mathematical models were demonstrated and utilized for optimizing and designing the dimensions of the actuator to obtain the maximum bending angle, the fast response, and the highest output force. The designed actuator was successfully fabricated using MEMS technologies and experiments were conducted to investigate the bending angle and the response time of the successfully fabricated actuator. The results showed good agreement between the experimental results and the simulation results, which proved the validity of the proposed models. Comparing with the previously proposed microactuator with an FERV, the proposed actuator had 4.5 times larger bending angle. From the results, the optimized actuator showed the feasibility for use in e.g. micro gripper application.
相似文献The vertically allocated free-standing SU-8 microstructures are typically bonded to a glass cover by the usage of uncrosslinked SU-8 adhesives. Such a phenomenon can easily cause SU-8 protrusion and eventually result in the SU-8 cantilever to be immovable. Traditional methods are sensitive to the bonding conditions and have a short bondable thickness of SU-8 adhesives. In this study, we propose an approach, that is, improved structural features, to alleviate the protrusion problem while extending the bondable thickness for the freestanding SU-8 microstructures in an enclosed channel. We used concave and moat microstructures as solutions of the improved structural features. We investigated the influence of both microstructures on the bonding quality and compared the bondable thickness with the previous one. THB-151N was used in another example to demonstrate the availability of our method. The bonding quality at the interfaces was evaluated by SEM images and direct inspection through a transparent glass cover. The bonding method is advantageous to other microfluidic systems, particularly those with long narrow channels.
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