Novel micro gripping, probing, and sensing devices for single-cell surgery

Several novel devices under development in our laboratories to ultimately realize a micro robotic system for single cell nanoscale probing, injection, imaging and surgery is described in this paper. Thus far, we have 1) developed MEMS polymer grippers that can be actuated under water with very large deflection and are capable of gripping 500/spl mu/m embryonic cells in water with /spl sim/2 V input; 2) developed a probe-etching technique to controllably shape fiber probes into various tip geometries, i.e., fibers with initial diameter of 125 /spl mu/m were sharpened into tips with angles ranging from <2.7-9.7/spl deg/ and with nanoscale tip diameters of <1/spl mu/m; 3) developed a novel PVDF force sensing system with resolution in the sub-/spl mu/N range for applications in bio-manipulation, bio-injection, and potentially single cell surgery. Details of these technologies are discussed in this paper.