Design and characterisation of a three-forked micropump on a fluid circulation channel

A fluid circulation micropump that has three control channels activated by a single pressure source is reported. The proposed micropump can rotate a fluid in one direction because the control channels have widths that decrease in the fluid flow direction, thereby squeezing a fluid channel with different deflections under an identical pressure. The response time and deflection of the control channels are also investigated to demonstrate the effect of width differences on the flow rate of the micropump. In this reported work, several micropumps with different channel width ratios are fabricated, and their flow rates are experimentally analysed; the maximum flow rate of the proposed micropump was 10.8 nl/min at 3 Hz and 350 kPa for control channel widths of 300, 200 and 100 μm.