A new micro pump for rapid and accurate microscale droplet manipulation using thermo-viscous actuation

Current study proposes a novel mechanism for micro-scale droplet generation. To this end, a new micro pump consisting of an expansion chamber with two nozzles at its left and right sides, is introduced which is capable of creating a unidirectional flow. In the current study, for the first time, thermo-Viscose expansion method is used to actuate the flow by assuming that the fluid is heated by using a laser beam source leading to expansion and movement of the fluid. Two-phase flow analysis using the VOF method showed that the proposed micro pump can consistently generate droplets with uniform and micro-scale dimensions.