Simulation of liquid meniscus and microdrop formation of a capillary gripper for microparts transfer

Microparts transfer plays an important role in various micromanipulation and microassembly tasks. One typical way of microparts transfer is based on the pick-and-place method with a microgripper. Microparts have the potential risks to be damaged due to the local stress concentration when they are gripped and it is a great challenge to release them reliably due to adhesion forces at microscale. In this paper, a flexible and reliable pick-and-place transfer scheme with a capillary gripper is proposed and the principle of the transfer scheme is based on microdrop control. A series of simulations are also performed. For picking microparts, the simulation results show that meniscus can be adjusted by altering the interface pressure. For placing microparts, the controllable formation of microdrops shows the placing reliability. These results are helpful to further optimization and control of the proposed capillary gripper.