Elastic Beating Pump Using Induced-Charge Electro-osmosis

Abstract

Pumping a viscous liquid in a confined space is essential in microfluidic systems because the pressure-driven flow rate through small channels decreases with the third or fourth power of the channel size. Hence, inspired by a cilium’s pumping ability in a confined space, we propose an elastic beating pump using a hydrodynamic force due to induced-charge electro-osmosis (ICEO) and numerically examine the pumping performance. By the multiphysics coupled simulation technique based on the boundary element method along with the thin double-layer approximation, we find that by selecting the optimum rigidity of the elastic beam, the ICEO elastic beating pump functions effectively at high frequencies with low applied voltages and shows a large average flow velocity with a remarkably large peak velocity that may be useful to flow a liquid with unexpectedly high viscosity. Furthermore, we propose a simple model that explains the characteristics of the time response behavior of the ICEO elastic beating pump tosome e...