Biomimic PDMS Valve Applied in Thermopneumatic Micropump

A passive biomimic PDMS valve applied in thermopneumatic micropump is firstly designed and realized. Unlike the conventional peristaltic pumping configuration, the micropump consists of two stacking layers of PDMS on a glass slide. This sandwich-type structure builds up two chambers. A thermopneumatic actuation chamber consists of a 57 ohm heater on the glass slide; the other fluid chamber is connected with inlet and outlet microchannel. A diaphragm between chambers isolates chamber mediums and transmits the thermopneumatic actuation. More importantly, the fluid chamber connects to microchannels via two passive biomimic PDMS valves. Thus, the fluid is driven and constrained in one way flow by the valves. The two passive biomimic PDMS valves produce one-way flow as the actuation diaphragm squeezing and releasing the pumping chamber. The micropump is driven by 1 Hz AC square wave of 10 volt peak. The thermopneumatic PDMS-based micropump is preliminarily tested and driven for 36 seconds. As the result, the measured flow rate of thermopneumatic micropump is 100 nL/min.