This paper presents a pump using polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel. PVC gels are compliant, have a simple structure, and exhibit large deformation at voltages in the range of 100–1000 V, which make them suitable for micropumps. In this study, a PVC gel sheet with a surface pattern that enhances active deformation in the thickness direction was employed for the fabrication of a pump. To this end, the PVC gel sheet was sandwiched between three sets of anode and cathode electrodes, after which voltages were sequentially applied to these electrodes to generate a peristaltic deformation of the gel sheet, thus pushing the liquid and creating a one-directional flow. Various pumps were fabricated using PVC gel sheets with different surface patterns, and the pumps were characterized. The pumps exhibited an outline dimension of 35 mm × 25 mm with a thickness of 4 mm, corresponding to a total volume of 3.5 × 103 mm3. The results revealed that the pump fabricated using a 174-μm-high pyramid-patterned gel sheet generated a flow rate of 224.1 µL/min at an applied voltage of 800 V and a driving frequency of 3 Hz. This observed value is comparable to or better than those of existing pumps based on smart materials.

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel actuators, as an electroactive material, have promising features, such as large actuation strokes and fast response, generated with a simple structure at relatively low applied voltage. Hence, the effective exploitation of these features should enable pumps with high output performance and scalability. In this study, we present a peristaltic pump using PVC gel actuators. Specifically, the pump comprises three sets of rigid electrodes sandwiching a PVC gel membrane. Thus, applying a voltage to the electrodes leads to a deformation in the thickness direction. Consequently, this deformation squeezes a liquid below the membrane, resulting in a flow. Further, the sequential actuation of each electrode pair realizes peristaltic motion that generates a continuous flow of a liquid in one direction. In particular, we fabricated a pump using a PVC gel with a micro-patterned surface. More precisely, the surface pattern comprises 300 μm-base square pyramids (height 261 μm). Due to the relatively large surface pattern compared to the previous study, a large displacement in the thickness direction of ~110 μm was observed at a voltage of more than 500 V. Additionally, the maximum flow rate generated from the pump was 195.3 μL/min at 0.5 Hz. This value is comparable to or even higher than the values obtained in previous pumps that utilized PVC gel actuators.

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