Fabrication and Characterization of Thermo-pneumatic Peristaltic Micropumps

In this paper, the fabrication and characterization of thermopneumatic peristaltic micropumps are presented. Micropumps with three different designs are fabricated using soft lithography techniques. The optimal operating conditions, such as duty ratios, operating frequencies and backpressure, are obtained. The maximum flow rate occurs at a driving frequency of 1.5Hz with a duty ratio of 40%. Under zero backpressure, the maximum flow rates of the 3, 5 and 7-chamber devices are very close, while the devices with larger numbers of pumping chambers exhibit better pumping performance under higher backpressure.