Design and analysis of a novel two DOF thermal micromanipulator

In this paper, a novel thermal microactuator is designed which is capable of producing bi-directional lateral and rotational output and one of its applications as a two DOF micromanipulator is shown. Also, by carefully choosing the doping level, temperature distribution is determined by considering the dependency of silicon's resistivity and conductivity to temperature. Using variable separation method an equation in terms of elliptic integrals is reached and after imposing boundary conditions the exact temperature distribution is obtained numerically. Currents at each branch is updated due to the last temperature distribution and this process is repeated several times until the final thermal distribution is reached with less than 0.1 percent change in two following computed currents. Furthermore, By using equations of postbuckling behavior of a cantilever subjected to tip multiple loading, deflections of flexible joints and computed linear axial and flexural stiffness of a box spring, a numerical approach has been developed to find output displacement of the micromanipulator.