Dear Colleagues,

The progressive miniaturization of grasping devices is opening new frontiers in very different fields of application, such as biology, surgery, drug delivery, diagnosis, manufacturing, assembly, automotive, and aerospace. Unfortunately, the design criteria generally adopted at the macroscale cannot also be applied at the microscale, mainly because of significant scaling phenomena that make motion and actuation rather difficult to achieve, and so we must arrive at a new paradigm for design. Although there is a large variety of micro- and nanogrippers described in the scientific literature, most of them have just one degree of freedom (DoF) and limited dexterity, while in some applications multiple DoFs and high dexterity would be greatly welcome.

Increasing the number of DoFs or dexterity is still a challenge in microsystem design because it generally requires a greater number of hinges or a more complex geometry. In fact, motion in MEMS or NEMS relies on material compliance. For example, lumped or distributed compliance can be adopted to provide a microgripper with a certain mobility capacity. In both cases, the mechanical structure must be conveniently shaped in order to guarantee both compliance and resistance, with a consequent increase in the geometrical complexity. Therefore, the mechanical design becomes an important phase in the development of a microgripper. On the other hand, a more complicated geometry gives rise to difficult problems in fabrication, and this is still a challenge.

For all these reasons, the present Special Issue is open to original contributions that will help to cope with these problems. In particular, this Special Issue is dedicated to the proposal of  new microgrippers, their simulation and experimental testing, and finally to the technological processes for fabrication they require.

Prof. Dr. Nicola Pio Belfiore
Guest Editor

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• microfabrication
• nanofabrication
• microsystem design
• microgrippers
• nanogrippers
• tweezers