Analysis of Micropump Operation Using HDL-A Macromodels

We demonstrate that the operation of microfluidic components such as micropumps can be efficiently modelled by standard electrical circuit simulators, using the Analog Hardware Description Language (HDL-A) for the model description. To this end we developed compact models for all parts of the micropump, including electrostatically actuated membranes, membrane valves and tubes. With the resulting macromodel of the entire pump the static characteristics as well as the dynamic behavior was correctly reproduced. Thus, with our approach it is possible to include nonelectrical systems straightforwardly in conventional microelectronic design environments.