Electrostatically-Controlled, Self-Pneumatically-Actuated Microvalve with High Pressure Tolerance and Low Pressure Loss

This paper describes a microvalve to control liquefied gas in a micro fuel reforming system. To realize both high pressure leak tolerance and low pressure loss, a main valve is pneumatically actuated by the pressure of the liquefied gas itself, and its pneumatic actuation is controlled by two electrostatic sub-valves. The fabricated microvalve was tested in terms of pressure loss in open state, leakage in close state and driving voltage. The pressure loss was less than 10 Pa/sccm, which is sufficiently low for the application. The apparent leakage was not detected until the input pressure reaches 150 kPa gauge. The driving voltage of the sub-valve was 40 V.