Principle and structure of a printed circuit board process–based piezoelectric microfluidic pump integrated into printed circuit board

Abstract

Considering mature printed circuit board processes, researches on microfluidic pumps that can be integrated into printed circuit board will provide a solution for further miniaturization and integration of microfluidic systems with low costs. The principle and structure of a printed circuit board process–based piezoelectric microfluidic pump integrated into printed circuit board are proposed and realized in this article. The printed circuit board process–based design and manufacturing technology of a piezoelectric microfluidic pump integrated into printed circuit board is researched utilizing printed circuit board as a platform. The flow characteristics of the fabricated microfluidic pump are experimentally tested. The research results show that the proposed principle and structure of the piezoelectric microfluidic pump can be fabricated utilizing mature printed circuit board process with advantages of simple structure and convenient processing. The fabricated printed circuit board process–based microfluidic pump can linearly pump in and pump out fluid with self-injection. Moreover, the flow rate and back pressure can be controlled by changing the peak-to-peak value, frequency, and phase difference of the driving voltages. The instantaneous flow rate has the pulsation property consistent with the drive voltage frequency. The proposed principle and structure are beneficial to integrate the fabricated printed circuit board process–based microfluidic pump with other microfluidic components to realize complicated microfluidic systems on printed circuit board.

Lab-on-PCB and Flow Driving: A Critical Review

“…These pumps were composed of a printed circuit board and piezoelectric commercial actuators (buzzers in electronic equipment). The experimental results show a maximum working frequency of 50 Hz with a maximum speed of 3 mm/min for a driven voltage of 140 V. The same working principle was used in the device described in [ 88 ]. In this case, the maximum average flow rate was 500 L/min when the peak-to-peak driven voltage was 100 V at 10 Hz, the maximum backpressure being 760 Pa.…”

The FAST Pump, a low-cost, easy to fabricate, SLA-3D-printed peristaltic pump for multi-channel systems in any lab

“…There are a number of possible solutions, with micropumps included on or off the actual device [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] , [18] . While some offer great versatility for highly multiplexed systems [19] , they all typically rely on highly specialized fabrication methods not easily accessible to researchers outside the field of microfabrication [19] , [20] , [21] or advanced machining [22] . In many cases this means that the easiest, and indeed only, solution is to use stand-alone commercial pumps such as syringe pumps, pressure pumps or peristaltic pumps.…”

Hydrocarbon Resin-Based Composites with Low Thermal Expansion Coefficient and Dielectric Loss for High-Frequency Copper Clad Laminates

“…As an important part of these electronic devices, the printed circuit board (PCB) that provides electrical connection between electronic components needs not only higher integration but also greater data transmission capacity [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The material, stack-up design, channel design, power noise filtering, termination schemes of PCB will greatly affect the data transmission capacity [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. It is well known that substrates with low dielectric constant (D k ) and D f can achieve characteristics of high fidelity and low delay in the process of high-frequency signal transmission.…”