Electrostatically Driven In-Plane Silicon Micropump for Modular Configuration

Abstract

In this paper, an in-plane reciprocating displacement micropump for liquids and gases which is actuated by a new class of electrostatic bending actuators is reported. The so-called “Nano Electrostatic Drive” is capable of deflecting beyond the electrode gap distance, enabling large generated forces and deflections. Depending on the requirements of the targeted system, the micropump can be modularly designed to meet the specified differential pressures and flow rates by a serial and parallel arrangement of equally working pumping base units. Two selected, medium specific micropump test structure devices for pumping air and isopropanol were designed and investigated. An analytical approach of the driving unit is presented and two-way Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulations of the micropump were carried out to determine the dynamic behavior. The simulation showed that the test structure device designed for air expected to overcome a total differential pressure of 130 kPa and deliver a flow rate of 0.11 sccm at a 265 Hz driving frequency. The isopropanol design is expected to generate 210 kPa and pump 0.01 sccm at 21 Hz. The device is monolithically fabricated by CMOS-compatible bulk micromachining processes under the use of standard materials only, such as crystalline silicon, silicon dioxide and alumina.

A Low-Power CMOS Microfluidic Pump Based on Travelling-Wave Electroosmosis for Diluted Serum Pumping

“…Moreover, this on-chip pump device is able to behave as a fluidic driving platform with good drivability which is able to integrate with various CMOS based biosensors as a complete bio-diagnosis system-on-chip (SoC). Compared with previous works 21,22 , the driving voltage and process feasibility is the major advantages. It should be noted that the trade-off is the flow rate, which is not outstanding compared with the other micropumping mechanism.…”

Miniaturized and Automated Synthesis of Biomolecules—Overview and Perspectives

“…These actuators could tune the applied pressure for the individual reservoirs to generate monodisperse droplets from each reservoir. The near future will certainly see chips with extremely miniaturized pumps that are integrated into microfluidic systems, and one application certainly will be to form droplets of defined sizes from different reservoirs inside the microfluidic system. Fusing two of these droplets would then create a unique mixture of chemicals to start a chemical reaction (Figure b).…”

“…That in turn makes it difficult to guarantee repeatable flow conditions in sophisticated chip designs. In addition, the completely different ways to manufacture them make them incompatible with the in‐chip‐micropumps that were described by Uhlig et al Moreover, PDMS is unstable for many organic chemicals, which certainly makes borosilicate glass microfluidic chips the preferable choice for chemical synthesis. These glass chips are synthesized via wet or dry etching, which are procedures that are available to only a few laboratories.…”

An Improved Passivity-based Control of Electrostatic MEMS Device

“…The electrostatic actuator is commonly used in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) applications such as microswitches [ 1 ], micromirrors [ 2 ], microvalves [ 3 ] and micropumps [ 4 ]. The actuator is characterized by the simplicity of its structure and the flexibility of the operation.…”