This paper reports a miniaturized electro-thermal gripper with a novel fabrication process applying composite silver-nickel ink. Compared to state of the art, a thick resistive structure is dispensed on a silicon wafer by an injecting machine, which will decrease the fabrication process complexity. Device size, driving power and deformation of the gripper could be further improved by stacking multi-layers of silver-nickel structures. In the paper, the electrical and mechanical behaviors of the micro-grippers are well characterized. The displacement of each arm is observed to be 310.6 μm for the applied current of 0.26 A. The maximum power dissipation is 400 mW for the actuators. The fabricated micro gripper can grip a small ball with a diameter of 1.3 mm.
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