The Characteristic Analysis of Electroosmotic Micropump With Multistage Nano-tubes Feng-Chin Tsai+ and Jen-Ching Huang Department of Mechanical Engineering Tungnan University, Taiwan

The main objective of this study This study used porous alumina membranes with nanopores as nanopore channels and successfully constructed a single-stage/multistage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump. The characteristics of electroosmotic nano-tubes pump constructed using porous alumina membranes with varying pore sizes and at different stages were also analyzed. During the experiments, applying a multistage nano-tubes electroosmotic micropump with the same pore size at the two stages yielded a superior performance curve compared to that of the single-stage nano-tubes electroosmotic micropump.

Item: Introduction Experimental setup Results and discussions Conclusion

Introduction: Most studies regarding electroosmotic pumps have employed microscale structures as the porous material, necessitating an electric potential of greater than 1 kV to drive the fluid flow. Such a high voltage is not convenient for establishing micro-electro-mechanical systems. By employing nanoporous film channels, a low voltage can be used to drive the liquid flow, which can be controlled at 1-1000 mL/min/cm2. These channels are suitable for micro-cooling systems.

This study emphasized the advantage of the low-voltage driving force required for the electroosmotic flow to pass through the nanoporous materials, and proposed using the nanopores of a porous alumina membrane as nano-tube channels to construct a singlestage/multistage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump.

Experimental setup singlestage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump

The SEM images of porous alumina membranes (5000X) 20 nm 100 nm 200 nm

The SEM images of the electrodes after sputter coating (100X)

Experimental setup multistage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump

Results and discussion

Analysis results of the single-stage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump

Analysis results of the multistage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump

The flow volume of multistage nano-tubes The flow volume of single-stage nano-tubes

The pressure difference of multistage nano-tubes The pressure difference of single-stage nano-tubes

Conclusions The flow volume and pressure difference of the pump increased rapidly with the input voltage. The flow volume of multistage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump with the same pore size can be increased more than twice that of single-stage pump. With a high input voltage, the multistage micropump showed a significant, approximately 4-fold increase. The results on the characteristics of single-stage/multistage nano-tube electroosmotic micropump can benefit the design of nano-tube channel flow controllers.

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