Micro Ball Valve for Fluidic Micropumps and Gases

Micro flow devices play a major role as components in the increasing field of micro analyzing systems. We developed an alternatively active or passive version of a micro ball valve, a piezodriven micro pump where the passive ball valves are employed and a fabrication sequence for buried flow channels. The magnetically actuated ball valve is able to switch a fluid flow actively at a pressure difference of more than 20 hPa between in- and outlet at a power of 100 mW. The micro pump, equipped with the ball valves, exhibits a maximum pump rate of 600 μl/min for water and 5.6 sccm/min for air and is self-filling and self-sucking. Buried flow channels can be fabricated in a single wafer, which reduces the substrates necessary for a gas flow distribution to two instead of three.

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