Characteristic studies of a novel piezoelectric impedance micropump

This study reports the design, fabrication and test of an innovative valveless piezoelectric impedance micropump. The impedance micropump includes two nickel electroforming components, a stainless steel vibration plate, two glass tubes, a piezoelectric actuator and a glass substrate. A prototype of the micropump, with the dimensions of 16 mm × 9 mm × 1.0 mm, is made by precise manufacturing. The two plate nickel components were fabricated by multilevel electroforming technology on a stainless steel substrate. The top structure plate was electroformed by three-level structures, while the channel plate had a one-level structure. The vibration plate was manufactured by stainless steel through the lithography and etching process from MEMS fabrication technology. Holding a planar structure, the impedance micropump can be readily integrated with other microfluidic parts to form a lab-on-a-chip microdevice. The experimental results have demonstrated the liquid flow rate of 0.24 ml/min and the back pressure of 2.35 kPa, when the micropump was driven by the alternating sine-wave voltage of 200 Vpp at 18.4 kHz.