A novel valveless micropump

A new valveless micropump for controlling micro-flow rate was designed and fabricated using simple fabrication technology. The working principle of valveless micropump was analyzed based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program ANSYS/Flotran. The construction of the valveless micropump using piezoelectric actuator as the servo actuator was proposed. In order to make full use of the kinetic energy, two inclusive chambers are actuated by one and the same PZT. The vibration modals and natural frequencies were obtained by means of FEM (Finite Element Method).Two most important parameters that affect flow rate of the micropump were examined, the input voltage and frequency. The experimental results indicate that the flow rates is linear to the driving voltage, the highest flow rate of 180μl/min is obtained when the pump is driven by a voltage of 225Vpp at a resonant frequency of 34 KHz. The flow rate of the micropump has a highly non-linear dependence on the frequency. The maximum flow rate is 110μl/min with an applied voltage of 125Vpp when the frequency is around the resonant frequency of 34 KHz, in good agreement with theory.