Fabrication and Performance of a Double-Chamber Serial Piezoelectric Micropump

Abstract

A double-chamber PZT micropump with two PZT actuators and three cantilever valves is introduced. When the PZT actuators work in anti-phase, the output performance of the pump is equal to that of two one-chamber pump running in series. Besides, the pump performance depends on the characteristic and geometrical parameters of the PZT actuators. A prototype double-chamber serial micropump is fabricated with the PZT membrane of 0.2mm in thick and 15mm in diameter. The pump was tested with water as the working medium. The testing results show that both the flowrate and backpressure of the micropump with two chambers running are about 1.54 and 1.8 times those with one chamber running, respectively. With two chamber running, the achieved maximum flowrate is up to 3.85ml/min at 50V and 150Hz, and the maximum backpressure is about 34.2kPa at 50V and 180Hz.