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A novel microactuator for microbiopsy in capsular endoscopes*

Sunkil Park1, Kyo-in Koo1, Seoung Min Bang2, Jeong Youp Park2, Si Young Song2 and Dongil 'Dan' Cho1

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This paper presents a LiGA (a German acronym for lithographie, galvanoformung, abformung) process based microactuator to be used for microbiopsy in capsular endoscopes. This microactuator is designed to be integrated into a capsular endoscope and to extract tissue samples inside the small gastrointestine which a conventional endoscope cannot reach. The proposed microactuator was fabricated as a cylindrical shape of diameter 10 mm and length 1.8 mm. This actuator consists of three parts: a microbiopsy part with a microspike, an actuating part with a torsion spring and a triggering part with a shape memory alloy (SMA) heating wire and polymer string. In order to extract sample tissue, a microspike in the developed actuator moves forward and backward using the slider-crank mechanism. For low power consumption triggering, a polymer-melting scheme was applied. The SMA heating wire consumed approximately 1.5 V × 160 mA × 1 second (66.67 µWH) for triggering. The precise components of the microactuator were fabricated using the LiGA process in order to overcome the limitations in accuracy of conventional precision machining. The developed microactuator was evaluated by extracting tissue samples from the small intestine of a pig ex vivo, and examining the tissue with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining protocol. The experimental tests demonstrated that the developed microactuator with microspike successfully extracted tissue samples from the pig's small intestines.


Footnote
*  This paper is an extended version of an oral paper presented at Transducers 2007: 14th International Conference on Solid State Sensors and Actuators, Lyon, France, 10–14 June, 2007.
PACS

87.63.L- Visual imaging

85.85.+j Micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS) and devices

Subjects

Electronics and devices

Medical physics

Nanoscale science and low-D systems

Dates

Issue 2 (February 2008)

Received 22 March 2007, in final form 10 December 2007

Published 11 January 2008



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