An industrialised silicon micropump for precise liquid dosing

M. Herz, N. Askamp, M. Richter Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration (IZM), Munich, Germany markus.herz@izm-m.fraunhofer.de An industrialised silicon micropump, developed at the Fraunhofer IZM Munich and manufactured by Tronics S.A., Grenoble, France, is being evaluated for the use in laboratory pipettes. Within this report, initial results are presented, indicating the potential of the micropump for highly accurate dosing purposes, and the future work needed to fulfil the requirements in form of respective industrial norms and applicants expectations. For an aspiration cycle, the pumps achieved an accuracy of 0,35 and a variational coefficient (CV value) of less than 0,5 percent.
Micropumps have long been of interest to the microfluidic research community. In this context, numerous physical principals have been exploited on a microscale to move minute amounts of fluids. The use of such pumps in laboratory analytics (i.e. Lab-on-achip devices) or miniaturized fuel cell systems leads this development to focus in liquid handling. A use of a micropump for pipetting is less common, in this case the pump device is required to move a fluid by means of an air cushion. Out of 68 pumps specified in a topical review [1], only 6 were capable of pumping air. At Fraunhofer IZM, a silicon micropump has been developed in recent years [2]. It is fabricated in silicon on 6 waver-level, two passive flap valves rectify the flow, and a piezoelectric unimorph causes a volumetric deformation. Previously, this pump has been optimized for liquid pumping, decreasing the dead volume within the pump to achieve full bubble tolerance. For the use of this pump in a pipette, the pump chamber depth was increased from 25m to 40m, to reduce the flow resistance and thus enhance the achievable flow rate of the pump. In this setup, the micropump was driven with a rectangular actuation signal for 5000 periods at 1 kHz to aspire close to 1ml of water. A 1,1 ml pipette tip with integrated filter (Eppendorf, Hamburg) was employed. Dosing accuracies within the scope of the norm were achieved.
Flow without Backpressure Flow [ml/min] 2,0 1,6 1,2 0,8 0,4 0,0 0 10 20 30 Time [Days]
C10
25 Hz 50 Hz 100 Hz 25 Hz 50 Hz 100 Hz

Fi

g. 3. Flow rate deviation over 10 measurements

Pipetting Test Pump J9

Dosing Volume [ml]

0,94 0,93 0,92 0,91 2 4

n = 10 Mean = 0,93643 ml Acc = 0,35 % CV 0,50 % se(yEr)= 0,00043 ml

Fig. 1. Schematic of the Micropump

In cooperation with Tronics S.A., Grenoble, France, a pilot series of this pump was manufactured industrially. Quality specifications such as flow rate with and without backpressure as well as valve leakage were met, enabling reproducibility testing of the devices. A set of nine pumps was tested over a period of 30 days to asses flow rate deviation.
Pump C10 C11 C12 H3 I14 I6 J9 L15 L7 Flow @ 100Hz [ml/min] 1,27 1,20 1,21 1,14 1,24 1,23 1,27 1,21 1,203 Std. Dev. 0,014 0,029 0,029 0,016 0,021 0,020 0,031 0,015 0,043 Std.Dev. [%] 1,10 2,41 2,39 1,39 1,69 1,62 2,43 1,24 3,57

8 10 12 Measurement No.

ig. 4. Dosing accuracy (aspiration)

An accuracy of 0,35 % and a CV of less than 0,50% was obtained for all measurements (see fig. 4) which were performed according to DIN/ISO 8655. Further work is currently being carried out to assess critical influences on accuracy and to integrate a second pump for the exhalation cycle.
[1] Laser, DJ and Santiago, A review of micropumps, Journal of micromechanics and microengineering, 14, 35-64, 2004, [2] R. Linnemmann, P. Woias, C.D. Senfft, J.A. Ditterich, Selfpriming and bubble-tolerant piezoelectric silicon micropump for liquids and gases, in: Proceedings of the IEEE MicroElectroMechanical Systems, 1998, pp. 532537.

Fig. 2. Flow rate deviation

Within laboratory settings, the flow rate varied in a range of 1,10 to 3,57 percent. A test stand was set up to measure pipetting performance of the pump according to DIN/ISO 8655 -1:2002 (Volumenmessgerte mit Hubkolben).
European Meeting on Microflow Metrology PTB Braunschweig

24.06.2009