A flexible electro-conjugate fluid micropump with three-dimensional triangular-prism-slit electrode pair

Electro-conjugate fluid (ECF) is one kind of dielectric and functional fluid, which generates a powerful jet named ECF-jet when electrodes inserted into it are subjected to high DC voltage. For the purpose of realizing some flexible micro devices based on such interesting phenomenon, this paper mainly focuses on the research of a flexible ECF micropump. As the ECF-jet generator of the studied micropump, a type of three-dimensional (3D) electrode pair so-called triangular-prism-slit (TPS) electrode pair is applied, thanks to its great merits of combining easy fabrication by micro electromechanical system (MEMS) technology and relatively high performance. Meanwhile, in order to generate stronger ECF-jet and realize flexibility of micropump simultaneously, high aspect-ratio TPS electrode array is fabricated on a flexible polyimide (PI) substrate by MEMS technology. Micro fluid channels are embedded and well sealed using sandwich structure of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cover, PI substrate with electrodes, and PDMS case by package technology. Finally, the flexible micropump with 10×10 pairs of electrodes and feature size 25.4mm×25.4mm is attempted in this paper.