Continuous micro liquid delivery by evaporation on a gradient-capillary microstructure surface

Abstract

An evaporation-based micropump is proposed and fabricated for delivering liquid with constant flow rates of ∼100 nl s−1 continuously. The liquid is pumped by the surface transpiration in a micro evaporator, which consists of a gradient-capillary surface by microfabricating micropost arrays. The micropost arrays are patterned such that the gaps between microposts reduce gradually away from the center microwell to the surface edge, by which a capillary force is formed to pull the liquid spreading on the evaporator surface. A simple analytical model is proposed to obtain the primary characteristics of the micropump, by which the influences of the contact angle of fluid on the flow rate and also the corresponding parameters during the operation of micropump are analyzed. The most striking feature of the micropump is that it can be precisely and simply controlled only by varying the surface wall temperature. The results indicate that a very linear relationship between the flow rate and solid wall temperature can be achieved by the present design. Quite consistent variation trend of the flow rate with wall temperature can be obtained between the experimental tests and theoretical analysis. The present micropump concept may be potentially used in delivering a precisely controlled, continuous flow rate for many new applications in the fields of biotechnology, environmental testing and instrumentation for analytical chemistry.