Design And Fabrication Of An Ipmc Actuated Micro-Pump With Inner Petal-Shaped Diaphragm

As a key fluid controlled component, micropumps have been widely used in the fields of electronics and biology. The core of pumping-system is made of an actuating diaphragm, closed cavity body and valve, in which diaphragm plays a more vital role. As a promising material candidate for micropump actuating diaphragm, Ionic polymer-metal composites (IPMC) can produce a linear stroke under low input voltages by reasonable shape design (general 3V). In this paper, we integrate an inner petal shaped IPMC as an actuating diaphragm into micropump to achieve fluid migration. First, we separately fabricated 8 petal-shaped IPMC actuators with the dimension of 1.0cm, 1.5cm and 2.5cm in diameter. And then we measured their electromechanical responses under 1-3V DC and AC voltage, respectively. After that, we assembled the micropump prototype with pump body by 3D printing technology and the petal-shaped IPMC diaphragm, and performed experimental characterization of the prototype. The experimental results revealed that the circular inner petal-shaped IPMC actuator with 25 mm in diameter produces a maximum deflection up to 0.7 mm at 3V DC voltage. When the voltage amplitude rises from 0.5V to 3V at 1Hz sinusoidal, the flow rate varied from 162 L/min to 1611 L/min, and back pressure reached up to 71mm-H2O.