Design and Fabrication of the Piezoelectrically Actuated Micropump with Implanted Check Valves

Abstract

This paper aims to present the design, fabrication and test of a novel piezoelectrically actuated, check valve embedded micropump having the advantages of miniature size, light weight and low power consumption. The micropump consists of a piezoelectric actuator, a stainless steel chamber layer with membrane, two stainless steel channel layers with two valve seats, and a nickel check valve layer with two bridge-type check valves. The check valve layer was fabricated by nickel electroforming process on a stainless steel substrate. The chamber and the channel layer were made of the stainless steel manufactured using the lithography and etching process based on MEMS fabrication technology. The effects of check valve thickness, operating frequency and back pressure on the flow rate of the micropump are investigated. The micropump with check valve 20 μm in thickness obtained higher output values under the sinusoidal waveform of 120 Vpp and 160 Hz. The maximum flow rate and backpressure are 1.82 ml/min and 32 kPa, respectively.