Peristaltic pumps based on polyvinyl chloride gel actuator

Abstract

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) gel actuators, as an electroactive material, have promising features, such as large actuation strokes and fast response, generated with a simple structure at relatively low applied voltage. Hence, the effective exploitation of these features should enable pumps with high output performance and scalability. In this study, we present a peristaltic pump using PVC gel actuators. Specifically, the pump comprises three sets of rigid electrodes sandwiching a PVC gel membrane. Thus, applying a voltage to the electrodes leads to a deformation in the thickness direction. Consequently, this deformation squeezes a liquid below the membrane, resulting in a flow. Further, the sequential actuation of each electrode pair realizes peristaltic motion that generates a continuous flow of a liquid in one direction. In particular, we fabricated a pump using a PVC gel with a micro-patterned surface. More precisely, the surface pattern comprises 300 μm-base square pyramids (height 261 μm). Due to the relatively large surface pattern compared to the previous study, a large displacement in the thickness direction of ~110 μm was observed at a voltage of more than 500 V. Additionally, the maximum flow rate generated from the pump was 195.3 μL/min at 0.5 Hz. This value is comparable to or even higher than the values obtained in previous pumps that utilized PVC gel actuators.