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Design and Fabrication of a Four-Arm-Structure

MEMS Gripper
Tao Chen, Liguo Chen, Member, IEEE, Lining Sun, and Xinxin Li

AbstractThis paper is focused on the design and fabrication

of a four-arm-structure microelectromechanical systems gripper integrated with sidewall piezoresistive force sensors. Surface
and bulk micromachining technologies are employed to fabricate the microgripper from a single-crystal silicon wafer (i.e.,
no silicon-on-insulator wafer is used). A vertical sidewall surface
piezoresistor etching technique is used to form the side direction
force sensors. The end effector of this gripper is a four-arm
structure: two fixed cantilever arms integrated with piezoresistive
sensors are designed to sense the gripping force. The resolution of
the force sensor is in the micronewton range and, therefore, provides feedback of the forces that dominate the micromanipulation
processes. An electrostatically driven microactuator is designed to
provide the force to operate the other two movable arms. In this
way, it creates a deflection of 25 m at the arm tip, and the range
of the operation is 30130 m. Experimental results show that
it can successfully provide force sensing and play a main role in
preventing the damage of microparts in micromanipulation and
microassembly tasks.
Index TermsElectrostatic comb drive, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), microgripper, sidewall piezoresistive sensor.

I. I NTRODUCTION

XTENDING a manipulation process to the microworld,

i.e., typically between 1 m and 1 mm, requires particularly efficient, reliable, and precise handling strategies. In the
past decade, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) constitute a rapidly growing research area and refer to a scientific field
of studies mainly involving electrical and mechanical functions
in hybrid microscale devices. The MEMS microgripper has
received considerable research interest to perform these main
manipulation tasks [1][3]. Microobjects are hard to manipulate because they are invisible to the naked eye and because
of their different behavior [4][6]. The micromanipulation of
those parts requires the use of miniaturized grippers with end
effectors on the size scale of the manipulated objects. Another
requirement for such devices is that they allow for the controllable actuation of the gripper arms with a range and resolution
of force and displacement matching the required size scale

Manuscript received April 13, 2008; revised August 14, 2008. First published
September 23, 2008; current version published April 1, 2009. This work was
supported in part by the High Technology Research and Development Program
of China under Grant 2006AA04Z256.
T. Chen, L. Chen, and L. Sun are with the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems, Robotics Institute, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin
150080, China (e-mail: cht22@sina.com).
X. Li is with the State Key Laboratory of Transducer Technology, Shanghai
Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of
Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2008.2005147

[7][9]. MEMS technology allows for the fabrication of

such devices that meet these requirements. Both suitable end
effectors and actuators can be fabricated with MEMS technology [10][12].
Silicon microfabricated grippers with comb-drive actuators
are versatile micromanipulation tools. They operate in ambient
or vacuum environment; their high versatility has been proven
with a multitude of manipulation tests. They are capable of
grasping objects from a wide dimension range. In 1991, a silicon electromechanical microgripper was presented in [13]. An
SOI microgripper with a comb-drive actuator has been reported
in [14]. Kim et al. [15] first reported a surface micromachined
polysilicon microgripper, which utilizes electrostatic force. A
novel high aspect ratio micromachining micromanipulator fabricated on (111) silicon wafer is reported in [16]. An electrostatically driven microgripper for blood vessel manipulation is
reported in [17]. These grippers were designed without force
feedback.
When it comes to the sensorization of microgrippers, many
microgrippers integrated with piezoresistive force sensors
or semiconductor strain-guage sensors have been reported.
Arai et al. [18] fabricated the micropyramids and the integrated
piezoresistive force sensor on the micro end effector to reduce
and control the adhesive force in microgripping tasks. In [19],
a microgripper has been designed and fabricated to manipulate
small objects like a cell. On the gripper, a piezoresistive sensor
is integrated for sensing the gripping force. In [20], an electrothermally actuated microgripper with integrated force sensor
is presented. It is fabricated on the wafer level using a simple
fabrication process. Unfortunately, the sensitivity is much lower
compared to hybrid designs, making it impossible to measure
the small forces dominating micromanipulation processes. The
gripper proposed by Sun et al. [21] was actuated by electrostatic
force and included a capacitive force sensor measuring the
gripping force, while measuring the small capacity change is
also a difficult work, and expensive SOI wafers are required to
build the grippers.
Piezoresistive sensing is mostly employed because of its
compatibility with operations in solutions and the simple fabrication process. This paper presents a new design for such a
gripper with electrostatic actuation and sidewall piezoresistive
force sensing. A novel vertical sidewall surface piezoresistor
technique is used to fabricate the force sensor different from
traditional piezoresistor forms. The main features of the new
microgripper are the following. 1) The gripper is actuated by an
electrostatic actuator and integrated with sidewall piezoresistive
force sensors to sense the gripping force. 2) The gripper is
designed as a four-arm structure to expand the manipulating

0278-0046/$25.00 2009 IEEE

CHEN et al.: DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF FOUR-ARM-STRUCTURE MEMS GRIPPER

Fig. 1.

997

Microgripper model.

range. This sensorized microgripper can be successfully used

in microassembly systems for force-controlled microgripping.
II. D ESIGN OF THE M ICROGRIPPER
A. Configuration
As shown in Fig. 1, this typical microgripper consists of
flexible beams, electrostatic comb fingers, force sensor beams,
glass substrates, and bonding pads. The movable structure is
supported by the flexible composite suspending beams. Glass
is used to be the substrate and insulation of the gripper configuration. The integral dimension of the microgripper is 6.2
3.5 0.8 mm. This gripper operates objects of sizes ranging
from 30 to 130 m.
The end effector is a four-arm structure which enables the
gripper to be used as three different tweezers, as shown in
Fig. 2. Arms 1 and 4 are fixed arms as the force sensor beams.
Arms 2 and 3 are moveable arms which are actuated by an
electrostatic comb. The comb microactuator generates a linear
horizontal motion, which is converted into the rotational motion
of arms 2 and 3 by an S-type flexible beam system to realize
the gripping motion. Therefore, arms 1 and 2 form tweezers
1, arms 2 and 3 form tweezers 2, and arms 3 and 4 form
tweezers 3.
As aforementioned, arms 2 and 3 are supported by the
flexible beams. The stiffness of them is weak. It is improper
to integrate the piezoresistors on them. In addition, the process
of aluminum wires on the thin flexible beams is not easy.
However, arms 1 and 4 are mobile in the structural dimensions
and positions on the gripper. With the process, a piezoresistor
of random dimension can be located on the vertical sidewall
surface easily. Then, arms 1 and 4 are optimal to be the force
sensor beams.
To pick up an object, arm 2 or 3 is pushed to close with
arm 1 or 4. This generates a gripping force that deflects the fixed
arms 1 and 4. This deflection is measured by the piezoresistor
for force sensing on the end of the fixed beams, as shown
in Fig. 2(a). The deflection of the arm is proportional to the
gripping force and is independent of the size or the mechanical
properties of the object which is gripped. When the voltage of

Fig. 2. Arms of the microgripper. (a) Sketch of the four arms. (b) Sketch of
the opening range.

the electrostatic comb is applied, arm 2 (arm 3) is pushed close

to arm 1 (arm 4); then, tweezers 1 and 3 close at the same time
as shown in Fig. 2(b), and tweezers 2 opens. Conversely, tweezers 2 closes when the voltage reduces; meanwhile, tweezers
3 and 1 open.
In order to increase the opening range of the gripper, the
different initial distances of the three tweezers are designed.
They are 55, 80, and 80 m in turn, as shown in Fig. 2(b).
The movable deflections of arms 2 and 3 are 25 m, shown
as the broken lines in Fig. 2(b). The opening ranges of the three
tweezers are continuous and complementary. In this way, the
manipulating range is expanded more than two times relative
to the traditional gripper which has just a single tweezers.
Tweezers 1 and 3 work at the same time, and the gripping force
can be sensed.
B. Design of the Electrostatic Actuator
The comb-drive actuator is one of the main building blocks
of MEMS and is widely used. Its working principle is based on
an electrostatic force that is generated between biased interdigitated conductive combs.
The comb microactuator includes static counter electrodes,
which are anchored to the glass ground pad, and a movable
shuttle with comb finger electrodes, which is supported by a
system of flexible bearing beams. The static electrodes and

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Fig. 3. Dimensions of the comb finger electrodes.

the shuttle part are electrically isolated. By applying a voltage

between the static electrodes and the shuttle, a driving force is
generated along the Y direction.
The configuration of the interdigitated comb fingers used for
the microgripper is shown in Fig. 3.
There is no initial finger overlap. If the edge effect is ignored,
the value of the whole capacitance C caused by comb fingers is
bh
(y + y)h
+ (2n 1)
C = 2n
d
a

the length of the comb finger is 25 m, and the thickness h is

50 m.
C. FEA of the Gripper

(1)

where = 8.85 1012 C2 /(Nm2 ) is the permittivity of air,

n is the number of the comb fingers, h is the thickness of the
fingers, b is the width of each comb finger, and d is the distance
between the plates.
When the voltage is applied on the two electrodes, the energy
of electric field E of the comb structure can be described as


1
(y + y0 )h
bh
CV 2
= nV 2
+ n
(2)
E=
V 2 .
2
d
2
a
The total driving force Fe is given by


dE
h
bh
1 dC
1
F =
= V2
= nV 2 n
V 2 2
dy
2
dy
d
2
a

Fig. 4. Relationship of the negative spring constant Ke , the X direction

spring constant Kx , and the displacement of combs.

(3)

where V is the driving voltage.

It is obvious that n, a, h, and d are the main parameters
for the structure of the gripper. The distance d influences the
drive efficiency and the depth of the deep-reactive ionic etching
(DRIE). Fig. 4 shows the relationship of the negative spring
constant Ke , the X direction spring constant Kx , and the
displacement of combs as the distance d changes. To ensure the
stability of the fingers, Kx should be larger than Ke . As shown
in Fig. 4, the section of Kx above Ke forms the stable region,
and then, distance d is selected in this region. In order to get
the proper distance, the driven efficiency and process should be
considered. The driven efficiency can be increased via reducing
d from (3); however, the reduction influences the precision
and difficulty of the process. By comprehensive consideration,
the distance d = 2.5 m is best for this gripper. In addition,
according to the design requirements of the gripper, it has been
fabricated with the following features: b = 5 m, a = 15 m,

Fig. 5 shows the finite-element analysis (FEA) results of the

gripper.
According to the theoretical and FEA results, when the
driving voltage V = 60 V, the moving distance of electrostatic
comb fingers are 7 m. The translational movement of the comb
drive is converted into a rotational movement of the gripper
arm. The motion of the end effector is amplified to 24 m.
It means that the flexible beam configuration magnifies the
movement of the comb fingers and minifies the force output.
The frequency is also analyzed by FEA as in Table I.
Generally, the measuring bandwidth is expected to be less
than half of the resonance frequency. Moreover, the cantilever
with low resonance frequency is easily influenced by the environment. Therefore, the first mode is most important in the
use of this sensor. A clean environment, a vibration isolation
platform, and a regulated power supply are needed to reduce
the exoteric disturbing frequency. Meanwhile, the high stiffness
and light mass are general design considerations as for the high
resonance frequency of the structure.

D. Design of the Piezoresistive Force Sensor

When compared with the other material of the pressure
sensor, the semiconductor pressure sensor has a small physical volume and weight but better accuracy and temperature
characteristics; above all, the manufacturing process of the
semiconductor pressure sensor is consistent with ICs, and this
satisfied the development of the semiconductor pressure sensor
to lead to the direction of integration and intelligence [22], [23].
Now, the most general semiconductor pressure sensor is the
p-n junction-type pressure sensor made by the distribution
process. The main advantages of the piezoresistive sensor are
the simple process and low cost [24]. In this paper, they are

CHEN et al.: DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF FOUR-ARM-STRUCTURE MEMS GRIPPER

Fig. 5.

999

FEA of the microgripper. (a) FEA of the stress. (b) FEA of the displacement.
TABLE I
MODAL ANALYSIS

integrated outside of the two fixed arms in the gripper to

measure the gripping force.
The n-type wafer and the p-type material like boron are
selected as the base and dopant, respectively, in this paper.
The n-type silicon can be reverse biased with respect to p+
regions which increase the impedance of the p-n junction
isolation between the feedthrough. The dosage and energy of
the implantation are controlled, and then, a p+ region with

11.2-m depth is formed in the n-type silicon substrate as

the piezoresistive sensor, as shown in Fig. 6. Implantation is
along the z direction and forms the resistance areas that are
100 4 m in the XY coordinate surface.
However, the force F is in the lateral direction along the
X direction, and the bend of the cantilever is in the XY
coordinate surface. In order to sense the lateral force, the depth
of the p+ region is used as the width of the piezoresistive sensor
in this gripper. Here, we call it sidewall piezoresistance sensor.
Therefore, the area of the piezoresistor to measure the gripping
force F is about 100 (1 1.2) m, and the depth is 4 m.
From (6), we can get that the maximal distance between the
resistor and neutral plane of the testing cantilever is the sidewall
outside. The sensitivity of the resistor outside is best to sense
the lateral force.

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Fig. 6. Piezoresistive cantilever.

Two sidewall piezoresistors are placed and connected so as

to maximize the sensitivities to various components of force
and moment. The piezoresistive effect of conventional single
crystalline piezoresistors can be expressed as
R
S=
=
R

Fig. 7.

Process sequence of microgripper fabrication.

l

1
0 2 44 axial (x)dx

(4)

where R/R is the relative change of resistance in a conventional piezoresistor due to the longitudinal stress, axial is
the corresponding stress coefficient, 44 is the piezoresistive
coefficient, and l is the length of the piezoresistor.
When the piezoresistor value is changed by R, the lateral
output signal is given by
1
R
Vpower = 44 axial,max Vpower
2R
4
12F l
=
ymax
bs h3s

V =
axial,max

(5)
(6)

where Vpower is the supply voltage and R is the resistance of the

nonstressed piezoresistor. bs is the width of the sensing cantilever along the z direction, hs is the thickness of the cantilever,
and ymax is the maximal distance between the resistor and
neutral plane of the testing cantilever.

Fig. 8. SEM images of the gripper. (a) Integrated structure of the gripper.
(b) Arms and piezoresistor beams. (c) Close-up view showing the comb fingers.
(d) Close-up view of the S-type spring beam.

III. F ABRICATION OF THE M ICROGRIPPER

Surface and bulk micromachining fabrication technologies
are used to fabricate microgrippers from silicon wafers. The
fabrication sequence is shown in Fig. 7.
1) The starting material is a 4-in n-type (100) orientation
110-cm double-polished silicon wafer with a thickness
of 300 m. The SiO2 layer thickness is controlled to be
approximately 0.5 m.
2) The first-time photolithography is conducted on the front
side of the wafer to pattern the piezoresistors, and then,
SiO2 is etched with buffer HF acid with photoresist as
the etching mask.
3) The piezoresistors are formed by a boron diffusion
process, and then, a drive-in process is done to send
boron ions deeper into the silicon substrate. In order to
reduce the temperature sensitivity of piezoresistors and
form better ohmic contacts in the next step, the impurity

Fig. 9.

4)
5)

6)

7)

Photographs of the local view of the piezoresistor beam.

concentration on the wafer surface is controlled at about

1019 atoms/cm3 .
The contact holes are patterned by photolithography and
opened by wet etching in buffered HF solution.
Aluminum wires that are 1 m thick and bonding pads
are formed by vacuum evaporation, photolithography, and
etching processes.
The aluminum thin film is photoetched for interconnection. The aluminum layer is stripped by plasma etching
with photoresist as the etching mask. Next, a sintering
process is performed in N2/H2 for 30 min at 400 C
to make a firm contact between electrodes and
piezoresistors.
The release windows in the backside of wafer are patterned by photolithography. Then, DRIE Bosch process is

CHEN et al.: DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF FOUR-ARM-STRUCTURE MEMS GRIPPER

1001

Fig. 12. Calibration sketch of the force sensor.

Fig. 10. PCB with gripper mounted on a three-axis stage.

Fig. 13. Relationship of the force applied on the sensor and the detection
voltage. The range from 0 to 400 N is commonly used in the manipulation.
Fig. 11. Relationship between the square of the driving voltage and the
deflection of the arm tip.

used to thin the device regions to 50 m with photoresist

(AZ9260) as the etching mask.
8) Then, the glass and silicon wafers are bonded together to
form the support base, and the glass becomes the nonconductor for the electrostatically driven microgripper.
9) The mechanical structure and vertical sidewall surface
piezoresistors on the testing beam, synchronously, are
formed by using DRIE. The parameters consist of the
length of deposition and etching cycles, and the flux of
the gas and the power of the subjacent electrode should
be controlled strictly to ensure the identical dimension of
the each piezoresistor.
Fig. 8 shows the scanning electron microscopy images of
the microgripper fabricated with the described process. The
microscope photographs of the local view of the piezoresistive
beam are shown in Fig. 9.
IV. C HARACTERIZATION
A test setup was established to characterize the performances
of the gripper. The gripper is glued and wire bonded directly on
a connecting printed circuit board (PCB), and the board is fixed
to the main PCB, as shown in Fig. 10.

TABLE II
SENSOR DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE

The main PCB was mounted on a three-axis stage. A microscope is used to observe the manipulation processes. Voltages
ranging from 0 to 80 V are used for actuation. This creates a
motion of 8 m in the comb drives. The motion is amplified by
the S-type beams, resulting in a deflection of 25 m at the arm
tip. The gripping force can be increased with the growing of the
driving voltage. The relation curve between the square of the
driving voltage and arm tip deflection is shown in Fig. 11.
For calibrating the piezoresistive sensor, the external excitation on the tip of the sensing arm to induce the sensor is most
important. The piezoresistive sensor is sensitive to even faint
stress; therefore, the tip deflection of the sensing arm should
be small enough to calibrate the resolution and sensitivity. An
electronic scale (including full scale: 21 g, accuracy: 0.01 mg)
and a piezoelectric ceramic microstage (including motion scale:
15 m, accuracy: 3 nm) are used as shown in Fig. 12.
The gripper is fixed on the microstage. It can be driven in a
step of 3 nm by the microstage. Moreover, the motion scale of
microstage can be utilized to calibrate the linear range of the

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TABLE III
COMPARISON OF DIFFERENT GRIPPERS INTEGRATED WITH FORCE SENSORS

Fig. 15. Signal output of the force sensor. The step up means the picking
operation, and the step down means the placing operation. Different driving
voltages generate the different amplitudes.

Fig. 14. Grasping the polystyrene microspheres in the gripper. According to

the size of the microspheres, different tweezers are chosen.

sensor. The thin needle is used to deflect the tip of the sensing
arm. It is fixed firmly on an aluminous cylindric block which is
stuck on the scale.
The sensing arm in the gripper moves to touch the needle; the
interaction force between the needle and the tip of the sensor
arm is measured by the electronic scale. This interaction force
is considered as the gripping force. During the calibration, the
output voltage is measured by a precision multimeter (Agilent,
Inc. 34401A; accuracy: 0.01 mV).
Convenient for the calculation of the calibration, each time,
a 5-N force is increased in turn by controlling the movement
of the microstage. The corresponding variation of the voltage
output is about 0.36 mV. The relationship curve of the gripping
force and the sensor voltage output is linearly shown in Fig. 13.
Table II summarizes the performance of the sensor. Table III
compares the specifications of different microgrippers integrated with force sensors. Since the sidewall surface piezoresistor technique is first used to fabricate the piezoresistive force
sensor, the sensitivity and resolution of gripper presented in
this paper are not optimal as for other piezoresistor designs.
However, being monolithically fabricated makes it simpler
and smaller than those assembled from different parts. The
resolution of an optical atomic force microscope design in [4]
is much higher but requires a complicated setup. The gripper

Fig. 16. Relationship curve of the gripping force and the square of the driving
voltage when the 40-m microsphere is gripped.

presented in [21] is actuated by electrostatic force and includes

a capacitive force sensor, while the circuit measuring the small
capacity change is also a difficult work, and expensive SOI
wafers are required to build the grippers. The device presented
in this paper is unique not only due to its compatibility with
operations in solutions and the simple testing circuit but also
due to the use of the low-cost single crystal silicon wafer.
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
An experiment of grasping polystyrene microspheres with
different sizes is performed with the gripper. A 30-m microsphere is grasped by tweezers 3 [see Fig. 14(a)]. A 50-m
microsphere is grasped by tweezers 1 [see Fig. 14(b)]. A 50-m

CHEN et al.: DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF FOUR-ARM-STRUCTURE MEMS GRIPPER

microsphere is grasped by tweezers 3 [see Fig. 14(c)], while

a 60-m microsphere is grasped by tweezers 1. An 80-m
microsphere is grasped by tweezers 2 [see Fig. 14(d)].
Different voltages are applied during pick-and-release manipulations, and the signal output of the force sensor is shown
in Fig. 15 during the picking and releasing of the 40-m
microsphere. By closing and opening the gripper arm, the signal
has a step up and down. The changes of the signal reflect
different gripping forces. Gripping forces of 350 N have been
measured at a driving voltage of 75 V, and forces of 100 N
have been measured at a driving voltage of 58 V. The relevant
curve of the gripping force and the square of the driving voltage
is shown in Fig. 16. The gripping force can be measured when
the voltage is about 40 V. At the moment, the microsphere
comes into contact with two arms. With that, the gripping force
presents approximately a linear trend with the square of driving
voltage.
VI. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, a novel design for a MEMS gripper with sidewall surface piezoresistive sensors was presented. The gripper
has four fingers, and therefore, three tweezers are integrated on
the gripper to expand the manipulating range. The gripper can
be used to handle a wide range of objects from 30 to 80 m with
the real-time gripping force feedback. In addition, the gripper
can also be used to grasp large objects with sizes ranging from
80 to 130 m, but the gripping force cannot be controlled. DRIE
is utilized to form the vertical sidewall piezoresistor on the
outboard surface of the testing cantilever for sensing the lateral
force. The sensitivity of the sensors is better than 72 V/N.
The gripper is processed in a single standard silicon wafer
(i.e., no silicon-on-insulator wafer is used), and the glass
bonded becomes the fine nonconductor for the electrostatically
driven microgripper. Polystyrene microspheres have been successfully manipulated, and the gripping force has been measured in real time. The gripping system provides a low-cost way
for micromanipulation and microassembly tasks.
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Tao Chen received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in

mechatronics engineering from Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin, China, in 2004 and 2006, where
he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in
mechatronics engineering in the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems, Robotics Institute.
His research interests include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) 3-D assembly and
micromanipulation robots, including mechanical
analysis and material characterization in MEMS,
system dynamics and control of mechatronics, and
MEMS electrostatically actuated systems.

1004

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 4, APRIL 2009

Liguo Chen (S05M06) received the B.S. and

M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering and the
Ph.D. degree in mechatronics from Harbin Institute
of Technology, Harbin, China, in 1997, 2000, and
2003, respectively.
Since 2003, he has been with the State Key Laboratory of Robotics and Systems, Robotics Institute,
Harbin Institute of Technology, where he is currently
an Associate Professor. His research interests lie in
robotics and automation, computer vision, microelectromechanical systems 3-D assembly, and micromanipulation robots.

Lining Sun received the B.S. degree in mechanical

engineering, the M.S. degree, and the Ph.D. degree
in mechatronics engineering from Harbin Institute of
Technology, Harbin, China, in 1985, 1988, and 1993,
respectively.
He is currently with the State Key Laboratory
of Robotics and Systems, Robotics Institute, Harbin
Institute of Technology. His research interests have
encompassed a number of related areas, including
robot control, design of actuators, design and control
of high-speed machines, microelectromechanical
systems (MEMS) 3-D assembly, MEMS robotic task execution, micromanipulation robots, etc. He has published extensively in journals and conference
proceedings and has supervised over 50 M.S. and Ph.D. students and a number
of Postdoctoral Fellows and Research Engineers in these various research areas.

Xinxin Li received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in

microelectronics from Fudan University, Shanghai,
China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively.
Since 2001, he has been a Professor and is currently the Director of the State Key Laboratory
of Transducer Technology, Shanghai Institute of
Microsystems and Information Technology, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China. His research
interests have been in the fields of micro-/nanosensors and transducers, micro-/nanoelectromechanical systems, and micro-/nanoelectromechanical
integration technologies. He is the holder of more than 30 patents. He has
published more than 150 papers in refereed journals and academic conference
proceedings. He is an Editorial Board Member of the International Journal of
Information Acquisition.
Dr. Li has been appointed as a Program Committee member for Transducers
2009. He served as a Technical Program Committee member for the 2008 IEEE
International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems and the IEEE
International Conference on Sensors (IEEE Sensors) from 2002 to 2008.