Design and development of an electrostatic-based micropump

Abstract

Growing need for variety of micro-electro-mechanical systems necessitates advances in manufacturing technologies for high volume production at low cost. In the bio-medical field, drug delivery is one of the areas that attract the most attention for MEMS because of its potential to make drug delivery less invasive, more precise and less painful. A typical micro pump is a MEMS device, which provides the actuation source to transfer the fluid, in this case, the drug from the drug reservoir to the body (tissue or blood vessel) with precision, accuracy and reliability. Micro pumps are therefore an essential component in the drug delivery systems. In this study, a mechanical micro pump (with moving mechanical parts) will be modelled using MEMS module of COMSOL simulation tool. The micro pump will be based on electrostatic actuation which in-turn is based on the Coulomb attraction force between oppositely charged plates. The objective of this study is to determine the performance characteristics of electrostatic diaphragm driver for a range of applied voltages.