A novel nano-gripper compliant mechanism with parallel movement of gripping arms

Research and development of and on micro and nano sized objects and systems have received considerable interest the last few decades and have accelerated the last decade during the advent of nanotechnology. Compliant mechanisms (CMs) have made an enormous contribution in the design process of various fields such as for adaptive structures, handheld tools, components in transportations, electronics, and surgical tools. Topology optimization has proven to be a powerful method for the conceptual design of structures and mechanisms. Topology optimization is the technique that finds the optimal layout of the structure within a specified design domain. This paper presents a nano-gripper, which can realize a parallel movement of the gripping arms with possibility for simultaneous positioning of the gripped object. The topology optimization is applied for designing two-dimensional nano-gripper compliant mechanism with parallel movement of gripping arms. As objective function, the traditional mean compliance design problem is considered, where the objective is to find the material distribution that minimizes the mean compliance for a certain volume constraint. The optimization algorithm is implemented in ANSYS by using the ANSYS Parametric Design Language (APDL). The final optimal topology configuration of nano-gripper with parallel movement of gripping arms is shown and discussed.