Tilted-air-jet active surface

This microconveyor is based on silicon microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. Microactuators work as air nozzles, which generate directed air flow by changing the pathways of compressed nitrogen gas. Each electrostatic actuator can be individually driven.

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Tilted-air-jet passive surface

We design a two-dimensional pneumatic conveyor for micro-chips manipulation. The conveyor can levitate and move flat objects to a desired position using controlled air-flow. The structure consists of a sandwich of silicon-silicon-Pyrex layers fabricated using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technologies, in which Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) and ultrasonic micro-machining techniques were used for silicon and Pyrex chips fabrication, respectively. The actuator array is about 9 mm x 9 mm in size and is composed of 8 x 8 pneumatic micro-conveyors. A micro-conveyor has four nozzles that can generate inclined air-jets allowing four conveyance directions. We demonstrated experimentally that 3 mm in diameter object of 2 mg weight can be conveyed to a desired position with intermittent air-flows of 20 kPa. Read more...

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Induced-air-flow surface

This devices exploit an indirect aerodynamic traction principle for handling delicate and clean products, such as silicon wafers, glass sheets or flat foodstuff. The product is carried on a thin air cushion and transported along the system by induced air flows. This induced air flow is the indirect effect of strong vertical air-jets that pull the surrounding fluid. Read more...

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