Abstract
A piezoelectrically actuated valveless micropump has been designed and developed. The principle components of this system are piezoelectrically actuated (PZT) metal diaphragms and a complete fluid flow system. The design of this pump mainly focuses on a cross junction, which is generated by a nozzle jet attached to a pump chamber and the intersection of two inlet channels and an outlet channel respectively. During each PZT diaphragm vibration cycle, the junction connecting the inlet and outlet channels with the nozzle jet permits consistencies in fluidic momentum and resistances in order to facilitate complete fluidic path throughout the system, in the absence of any physical valves. The entire micropump structure is fabricated as a plate-by-plate element of polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) sheets and sandwiched to get required fluidic network as well as the overall device. In order to identify the flow characteristics, and to validate the test results with numerical simulation data, FEM analysis using ANSYS was carried out and an eigenfrequency analysis was performed to the PZT diaphragm using COMSOL Multiphysics. In addition, the control system of the pump was designed and developed to change the applied frequency to the piezoelectric diaphragms. The experimental data revealed that the maximum flow rate is 31.15 mL/min at a frequency of 100 Hz. Our proposed design is not only for a specific application but also useful in a wide range of biomedical applications.
Highlights
Onsite biomedical devices used in microfluidics are very popular and help to make human life healthy and comfortable
We developed a dual diaphragm, piezoelectrically actuated (PZT) valveless micropump using a simple fabrication technique to precisely control the fluid flow with polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) sheets, in a cost-effective manner
The test results showed that the flow rate decreases with the increasing head, and this gives the maximum pump head of 24 mm H2 O
Summary
Onsite biomedical devices used in microfluidics are very popular and help to make human life healthy and comfortable. Though manufacturing these devices in a micro-scale is a great challenge and there is a growing demand. Among all the biomedical devices used in microfluidics applications, micropumps are essential [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Micropumps are defined as the diminished pumping elements fabricated by micromachining technologies. They are subcategorized as displacement micropumps and dynamic micropumps through the consideration of their driving fundamentals.
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