Performance of single piezoelectric vibrator micropump with check valve

Abstract

A new single vibrator piezoelectric micropump which integrated the check valve and the piezoelectric oscillator is designed in this research. The micropump mainly consists of a circular piezoelectric vibrator, a polyethylene terephthalate check valve, two rubber sealing rings, upper pump cover, and lower pump cover. In this research, in order to study output performance of the single vibrator piezoelectric pump, theoretical analysis and experimental verification of the piezoelectric pump check valve have been carried out by exploiting the method of check valves and vibrator mass separation. Experimental results show that the opening of the check valve is mainly caused by the pressure difference and the inertia force. The dominant factor of check valve opening is different under different drive frequencies. A maximum opening displacement of 19.625 μm of the check valve is obtained when the micropump is driven by a sinusoidal voltage of 60 V at 300 Hz. In addition, the maximum flow rate of 2034.7 mL min⁻¹ is obtained when the micropump is driven by a sinusoidal voltage of 60 V at 320 Hz, and a maximum output pressure of 0.82 kPa is obtained when the micropump is driven by a sinusoidal voltage of 60 V at 140 Hz.