Design and fabrication of a valveless micropump based on low temperature co-fired ceramic tape technology

Low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) tape technology has been widely studied in microsystems and microfluidic devices. The current study presented the manufacturing process of a simple and inexpensive micropump which is made of LTCC. The components of micropump including fluidic channels, diaphragm, chamber, and planar diffuser valves were integrated in one LTCC module. Geometries of these components were designed based on numerical analysis. The finite element analysis was used to characterize the displacement of a piezoelectric actuator and the computational fluid dynamics was applied to design the diffuser. The performance of the micropump was optimized and performance of the designed micropump was carefully examined in the experiments. The data revealed that the performance of a micropump can be significantly increased by adding a pair of pockets. Overall, the study demonstrated that LTCC tape technology is a simple and reliable method to fabricate a valveless micropump.