Peristaltic pumps based on polyvinyl chloride gel actuator

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.