Peristaltic micro-pump with normally deflecting membrane fabricated using glass based naster mold

Abstract

In this project, a Peristaltic fluid micro pump having normally deflecting membrane on a glass based master mold is developed. The developed peristaltic micro-pumps consists of three or more pump membranes connected sequentially. This structure is primarily aimed for enabling high pumping stroke of fluid hence increasing the flow rate. Besides the main purpose, this method can simplify the fabrication reducing the steps of the membrane transfer from master mold to membrane spacer. In this study, the flexible membrane that forms a curved dome-shaped is fabricated implementing a glass rod as the master mold with diameter and height of 4 mm and 2 mm, respectively. The membrane layer was made by pouring in PDMS at the top of mold master. This technique enables to produce a membrane in a normally deflecting form even though there is no interference with the membrane. Apart from that, the membrane can be adjusted to obtain expected flow rate and certainly the size of the membrane diameter. The structures have been successfully fabricated using soft-lithography technique. The functionality test of the fabricated pump system shows that the fluid was able to flow from the inlet to the outlet on the other side of the pump membrane without leaking. The result of this research is expected to be applied as fluid injection system in biomedical instrumentation that need high fluid rate.