A three-stage thermopneumatic peristaltic micropump for PDMS-based micro/nanofluidic systems

A three-stage thermopnuematic peristaltic micropump for controlling micro to nano litters of fluid was simply designed and fabricated from PDMS on glass slide. Pump structure consists of inlet and outlet, microchannel, three thermopneumatic actuations, and three heaters. In microchannel, fluid is controlled and pumped by peristaltic motion of actuation diaphragm. Actuation diaphragm can bend up and down by exploiting expanded air that induced by increasing heater temperature. The motion of fluid in nanoport was captured by digital camera every 5 minutes, and then the flow rate was monitored from height difference of fluid in nanoport by consecutive records. The optimum flow rate is 0.82 mul/min (=13.6 nl/sec) with applying 14 volts three-phase input driving voltage at frequency of 0.033 Hz.