A novel micropump with fixed-geometry valves and low leakage flow

A novel micropump with fixed-geometry valves was designed and tested with a leakage barrier to reduce leakage flow. Conventional micropumps with fixed-geometry valves have achieved net positive fluid flow from different fluid resistances in diffuser/nozzle channels. However, those micropumps are susceptible to leakage flow even at low pressure differences between the inlet and the outlet because the channels remain normally open state when the pumps are not in operation. Therefore, a leakage barrier in the chamber was designed to reduce leakage flow without interfering with the net positive fluid flow of the diffuser/nozzle channels. The diffuser/nozzle channels, the chamber and the leakage barrier were fabricated on the silicon substrate by KOH etching and the silicon substrate was anodically bonded with a Pyrex glass plate. A PZT disk was bonded on the glass plate by epoxy and was actuated to oscillate the glass diaphragm for flow generation. When the micropump is not operating, the leakage barrier removes most of the gap between the glass plate and the bottom of the chamber. It was experimentally confirmed that the leakage barrier reduced the leakage flow by 96% compared to the case of no leakage barrier at a pressure difference of -400 Pa. Moreover, by applying the holding dc voltage to the PZT disk, a smaller gap can be obtained reducing the leakage flow further down to 0.043 muL min-1 at a holding dc voltage of 100 V. The maximum flow rate was 3.9 muL min-1 at a peak-to-peak driving voltage of 150 V at 20 Hz with a maximum back pressure of around 800 Pa. The approximate device size was 18 X 25 mm2.