Abstract
Recently, we developed a simple thermopneumatic micropump having neither a membrane nor a valve. This micropump discharges liquid by a thermopneumatic pressure and refill by a capillary attraction. In case of the micropump driven by the capillary attraction, the flow characteristic depends mainly on the geometry of the micropump. In this paper, we investigated the influence of the geometry of the micropump on the performance of the micropump to illustrate the properness of the micropump shape. We analyzed the micropump characteristics of six types having different geometries by FVM simulation with a commercial CFD tool. Also we fabricated the micropumps with PDMS and glass by micromachining, and tested the performances. The simulation and the test results illustrate that the discharge volume and the discharge time depend on the chamber volume. The expansion angle of the inlet channel location has influence on the refill time, while the front air channel direction has influence on the backward flow loss.
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