ECF micropump fabricated by electroforming with novel self-aligned micro-molding technology

Abstract

This paper proposes and presents a novel ECF (electro-conjugate fluid) micropump with TPSEs (triangular prism and slit electrode pair) fabricated by electroforming process using newly developed self-aligned micro molds. ECF is a kind of functional and dielectric fluid. ECF micropump is based on the principle of ECF jet, which is a powerful and active jet flow generated between electrodes immerged in ECF, when high DC voltage is applied to the electrodes. Our previous research experimentally demontrated that the ECF micropump had high power density thanks to the 2D-integraton (serialized integration and paralleled integration) of our proposed MEMS fabrication method by using micro-molding and electroplating. Moreover, it was also proved that higher aspect ratio of TPSEs by the multilayer fabrication process resulted in higher flow rate of the ECF micropump. However, the multilayer fabrication has demerit to require precise alignment that is time-consuming and extremely difficult to be met. In order to improve alignment accuracy and alleviate fabrication difficulty, this paper proposes a novel self-aligned MEMS fabrication process for high aspect ratio TPSEs. The ECF micropump by this newly-proposed MEMS process was successfully fabricated and the feasibility was proved by experimentally investigating output performance of the ECF micropump.