A valve-less diffuser micropump for microfluidic analytical systems

The suitability of valve-less micropumps in biochemistry has been shown. Fluids encountered in various biochemical methods that are problematic for other micropumps have been pumped with good performance. The pump is fabricated as a silicon-glass stack with a new process involving three subsequent deep reactive ion etching steps. Some of the main advantages of the valve-less diffuser pump are the absence of moving parts (excluding the pump diaphragm), the uncomplicated planar design, and high pump performance in terms of pressure head and flow rate. In addition, the micropump is self-priming and insensitive to particles and bubbles present in the pumped media. The results show that the valve-less micropump successfully pumps fluids within the viscosity range of 0.001–0.9 N s/m2. The micropump is not sensitive to the density, ionic strength, or pH of the pumped media. Effective pumping of solutions containing beads of different sizes was also demonstrated. Living cells were pumped without inducing cell damage and no cell adhesion within the pump chamber was found. No valve-less micropump has previously been reported to pump such a wide variety of fluids.