Affiliation:
1. School of Micro‐Nano Electronics Zhejiang University Hangzhou P. R. China
2. Internet of Things Research Center Advanced Institute of Information Technology Peking University Hangzhou P. R. China
3. Key Laboratory of Excited‐State Materials of Zhejiang Province Department of Chemistry Zhejiang University Hangzhou P. R. China
Abstract
AbstractHerein, we report an electroosmotic pump (EOP) based on a multilayer track‐etched polycarbonate (PC) membrane. A remarkable increase of maximum backpressure (198.2–2400 mmH2O) of a fundamental pump unit was obtained at 0.8 mA, when the number of PC membranes was increased from 1 to 10. Meanwhile, the corresponding flow rate was increased from 80.3 to 111.7 µL/min. Furthermore, multiple pump units were assembled in series to obtain a multistage EOP. For a three‐stage EOP (EOP‐3), the operating voltage and power can be decreased significantly by 52%–72% under different driving currents, with a minimum power of 26.7 µW. Thus, EOP‐3 can run stably over 35 h at a pulse current of 0.1 mA without the generation of gas bubbles. The pump was further integrated into a miniature device, which was successfully used to decrease the blood glucose level of diabetic rats by subcutaneous delivery of fast‐acting insulin. This work brings a facile and efficient strategy to enhance the backpressure and lower the operating voltage and power of EOPs, which may find promising applications in drug delivery.
Subject
Clinical Biochemistry,Biochemistry,Analytical Chemistry