A New Micro-Chemical Reactor Using Fluid Filters for Vertical Fluid Flow Operation

Abstract

We proposed and fabricated a new chemical reactor with a vertical fluid flow operation for the environment analysis, post-genome analysis, gene diagnosis, and screening of useful materials for medicine manufacture. This reactor is characterized as a simple structure with new aspects of the vertical fluid transportation induced using a fluid filter with micro-through bores. The deep X-ray lithography process using synchrotron radiation was used for the fabrication of such a fluid filter. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation results revealed that fluid can be sustained on the surface of the fluid filter and easily transported by pneumatic operation. It was confirmed that the fluid flow velocity through the filter can be controlled by varying the loaded pressure around several kPa. It was demonstrated that the proposed chemical reactor has a good vertical fluid flow operation performance.