A High-Performance Piezoelectric Micropump with Multi-Chamber in Series

Abstract

Based on the multi-chamber series structure, a piezoelectric micropump with high output performance is proposed in this paper. The proposed micropump is composed of the circular unimorph piezoelectric vibrator, the cantilever check valve, and the pump body. First, the working process of the piezoelectric micropump was analyzed in detail. Then, the effect of the key dimension parameters on the output performance of the micropump was explored. The key dimension parameters mainly refer to the height of the pump chamber and valve opening (the deformation size of the valve). Finally, experimental prototypes with different parameters were fabricated for the evaluation of the output performance of the micropump. The experimental results show that when the pump chamber height is 0.1 mm and the valve opening is 0.4 mm, the piezoelectric micropump has a good comprehensive output performance. In particular, at 170 V and 120 Hz, the maximum flow rate of the dual-chamber series pump is 65.5 mL/min, and at 100 Hz, the maximum output pressure reaches 59.1 kPa. Moreover, at a certain voltage of 170 V, when the drive frequency is 450 Hz and 550 Hz, the output flow rate and pressure of the four-chamber series pump reach a maximum of 110 mL/min and exceed 140 kPa, respectively. In addition, the volumes of the proposed single-chamber, dual-chamber series, and four-chamber series micropumps are 22 mm × 22 mm × 5 mm, 32.6 mm × 22 mm × 5 mm, and 53.8 mm × 22 mm × 5 mm, respectively. The proposed piezoelectric micropump has the advantages of simple structure, low cost, miniaturization, and high output performance, thus gaining potential practicality for biomedical applications, cooling systems, fuel supply, chemical applications, etc.