Title :
Micromachined porous polymer for bubble free electro-osmotic pump
Author :
Senol Mutlu ; Cong Yu ; Selvaganapathy, Ponnambalam ; Svec, F. ; Mastrangelo, C.H. ; Frechet, J.M.J.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Michigan Univ., Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Abstract :
A novel porous polymer was microfabricated to serve as a porous plug for a new device, the porous plug electro-osmotic pump (pp-EOP). The plug eliminates any back pressure effects while enhances electro-osmotic flow in a channel. The pp-EOP was batch fabricated by surface micromachining on top of a silicon wafer. The pp-EOP device is driven by a periodic, zero-average injected current signal at low frequencies producing bubble-free electro-osmotic flow with reversible net movement. Testing of the device produced an average water-air interface velocity of 1.8 /spl mu/m/s at 0.8 Hz. The velocity was increased to 4.8 and to 13.9 /spl mu/m/s by necking the channel size.
Keywords :
micromachining; micropumps; osmosis; polymers; porous materials; 0.8 Hz; 1.8 to 13.9 micron/s; Si; batch fabrication; bubble-free channel flow; current injection; porous plug electro-osmotic pump; porous polymer; silicon wafer; surface micromachining; water-air interface velocity; Counting circuits; Electrodes; Electrokinetics; Frequency; Immune system; Microfluidics; Plugs; Polymers; Valves; Voltage;
Conference_Titel :
Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, 2002. The Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on
Conference_Location :
Las Vegas, NV, USA
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-7185-2
DOI :
10.1109/MEMSYS.2002.984050