A Valveless Piezoelectric Micro-Pump Using Peristaltic Motion of Two Sided Disk Type Vibrator

Abstract

Piezoelectric micro-pump should contain the physical running parts like check valves for acquiring the unilateral motion of fluid from the alternating motion of actuators. But the check valves raise many problems such as abrasion or exhaustive destruction by the recursive mechanical displacement. And the performances of micro pump are deteriorated by them. To solve these problems, we propose a novel type piezoelectric valveless micro-pump using peristaltic motion due to the travelling wave excitation. Proposed pump model consists of two piezoelectric ceramic plates, elastic metal body, caps for covering flow path, rubber rings for tight sealing and disk springs for the pressurization of pump body. The FEM simulation analysis of the proposed pump model was carried out to verify its operation mechanism. And a prototype pump was fabricated and evaluated to validate the proposed concepts. Maximum back pressure was 0.97kPa and flow rate was 640μl/min under 130V_rms, 67.5kHz of driving voltage.

Keywords:

• Piezoelectric pump
• valveless micro-pump
• peristaltic motion
• travelling wave

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology(KRF-2008-313-D00376).