In this paper, we first report a micropump actuated by surface tension based on continuous electrowetting (CEW). We have used the surface-tension-induced motion of a mercury drop in a microchannel filled with an electrolyte as actuation energy for the micropump. This allows low voltage operation as well as low-power consumption. The micropump is composed of a stack of three wafers bonded togeth...

A micropump driven by a heart muscle of insect was designed and demonstrated in this work. To realize bioactuator with self-contraction and environmentally robustness in a microfluidic device, an insect muscle tissue as a power source was applied for in-situ liquid flow generation. A diaphragm-based micropump was designed, fabricated and assembled with an insect muscle tissue. The micropump gen...

An active mixing and pumping strategy is proposed to enhance mixing of two fluids through vortex formation and accumulation. A resonant micropump-mixer is designed and fabricated, where an electrostatically activated plate is placed at or in close vicinity of the interface between the two incoming streams at the junction of a Yor T-shaped microchannel. Mixing is enhanced by increased interface ...

The purpose of this research is to study the mechanical behavior of a micropump with clamped circular diaphragm which is the main component of drug delivery systems. In this paper, the non-linear governing equations of the circular microplate using Kirchhoff thin plate theory was been extracted based on the modified couple stress (MCST) and classical (CT) theories. Then, the non-linear equation...

A MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) micropump with circular bossed membrane designed for nanoliter drug delivery is characterized in this article. A quasistatic model under consideration of low operating frequency is used to characterize this micropump. The mathematical model is an ordinary differential equation that describes the behavior of the micropump by including its key components ...

A peristaltic micropump was fabricated and characterized. The micropump was fabricated using soft lithography, and actuated using piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers. The micropump channel was formed by bonding two layers of PDMS, mixed at 5:1 and 30:1 ratios. The channel was fabricated in the 5:1 layer using replica molding (REM), where a very simple and inexpensive template was made by straddli...

Bimetallic Pt-Au nanorods in the form of microswimmers within an aqueous solution exhibit self-propulsion that is powered by self-electrophoresis. This bimetallic system can be immobilized to generate convective fluid flow, thereby acting as a micropump. Here we use combined experimental and numerical approach investigate key elements, including self-induced electric field, proton gradients, re...

For realization of micro fluid power sources applicable to microfactory or micromachines using fluid power with high power density, a resonantly-driven piezoelectric micropump with newly devised check valve unit is developed and a practical application to micro press is attempted. First, a micro sheet valve having a floating valve-body inside valve chest to increase valve-opening and to decreas...

In this study, a hybridized neuro-genetic optimization methodology realized by embedding numerical simulations trained artificial neural networks (ANN) into a genetic algorithm (GA) is used to optimize the flow rectification efficiency of the diffuser element for a valveless diaphragm micropump application. A higher efficiency ratio of the diffuser element consequently yields a higher flow rate...

As part of the Post-Katrina project, a multi-fluidic speed-modulating (MFSM) micropump module combined with Tesla valves and hydrodynamic focusing micro-fluidic channels was designed, fabricated, and tested to help regulating sample flow across the nanowire-seeded sensor areas embedded in microfluidic channels. The size of the entire module is 33 mm x 25 mm x 8mm and comprises of three MFSM mic...