Design, Optimization and Analysis of a Novel Compliant Guiding Mechanism for Piezo-Driven Vibration Microinjection

Cell microinjection, as a significant tool of biomedical research, calls for advanced equipment with high efficiency, high success rate, high reliability, and repeatability. With the intent of providing a useful manipulator for robotic cell microinjection, this paper presents a novel complaint guiding mechanism for piezo-driven vibration cell microinjection. Mechanism design, kinematic modeling, parametric optimization, and simulation of the designed guiding mechanism are introduced in detail. The compliant guiding mechanism has a symmetrical and parallel connection structure with lumped compliance at its double-notch right-circle flexure hinges. Aiming at avoiding the resonance of the mechanism at actuation frequency, the response surface algorithm is utilized to optimize the dominant structural parameters of the designed guiding mechanism based on kinematic modeling with the pseudo-rigid-body method. The finite element simulation results show that the optimized compliant mechanism has the advantages of high off-axis stiffness and ideal working performance at the actuation frequency of 15 kHz, where the output amplitude of in-plane and out-of-plane lateral vibrations are diminished to 40% and 25% of the input lateral vibration amplitude respectively.