Design and fabrication of micro-channels based fluid viscosity sensor

This paper presents the design and fabrication of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based microfluidic channel integrated with piezoelectric micro-cantilever as fluid sensor. A finite element analysis is carried out to simulate fluid–structure interaction and estimate cantilever deflection under different fluidic flows at constant flow rate. The design of device is based on the material selection as well as determination of geometrical dimensions. In this proposed work, a piezoelectric material is selected for micro-cantilever beam on the silicon substrate. The micro-channel is fabricated from SU8 mould and the material selected for channel is PDMS. Fabrication was done by considering systematic steps toward optimization of shape and geometry involving soft lithography process. The results obtained are compared with the FEM based (COMSOL Multiphysics) model that is designed and analyzed prior to the experiment. Further, the experimental results showed a good agreement with the predicted values calculated by the simulated model. Thus, the device is successfully designed and fabricated for sensing different fluids.