Simulation and experiment of valveless micropumps driven by piezoelectric–heating coupling for microfluidics

Abstract

Valveless micropump, important components of a microfluidic system, are widely used in biomedicine, chemical industry, microelectronics cooling and other fields. At present, the driving mode of micropump is mainly single drive, resulting in insufficient driving force and low output pressure. In this study, the overall structure of valveless micropump is designed, and the driving component and the internal inlet and outlet are compared and analyzed by finite element simulation. Moreover, the valveless micropump prototype is processed and developed for performance test. Results show that the output performance of the valveless micropump driven by piezoelectric and heating coupling is better than that of the piezoelectric micropump. When the ambient temperature was 20 °C, 140 V voltage and 40 Hz frequency were added to the piezoelectric component, as well as a 3A current to the heating plate. Furthermore, the liquid flow rate through the microneedle was 0.98 µl/s after a period of time.