A novel architecture to implement low-cost ferrofluidic pumps

The availability of easily reconfigurable and reliable transducers is of main importance for several applications. Actually, sensors and actuators adopting ferrofluidic cores have been classified in that category for their intrinsic robustness against external shocks and the possibility to produce flexible architectures to be used for several uses, from the detection inertial quantitie to bio-application. In this paper a novel architecture implementing a ferrofluidic pump is presented. The device is intended for several purposes including fluid control in bio-applications. The proposed architecture can be considered a macro-prototype which is feasible for integration. The complete characterization of the device has been performed by using a dedicated set-up and a suitable driving tool. Actually, the device performance has been estimated in terms of flow rate and drop pressure.