Development of a peristaltic gas micropump with a single chamber and multiple electrodes

This paper reports on the development of a multi-electrode electrostatically driven peristaltic gas micropump. The micropump consists of a single chamber and a flexible diaphragm with a multi-electrode pattern. The single-chamber design is divided into smaller cells by the electrodes; the characteristic operating frequency of the micropump increases as the number of electrodes increases. The flow rate is also observed to increase to maximum before decreasing for larger numbers of electrodes. Whereas the maximum flow rate of a 4-electrode micropump is about 40 µl min−1 at 14 Hz, the maximum flow rate of the 16-electrode micropump is about 250 µl min−1 at 1400 Hz and that of the 32-electrode micropump is 150 µl min−1 at 4000 Hz.