Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : September 05, 2021 - September 08, 2021
The development of pumps and mixers is important to improve the performance and multifunctionality of microfluidic systems. In particular, piezoelectric actuators are often used because they are easy to miniaturize, have excellent response, and can be controlled with high precision. In our previous work, we devised a new actuator combining a bimorph piezoelectric plate and a metal cap, and confirmed its excellent bending performance by experiments and numerical analysis. In this study, the proposed new actuator was applied to a microfluidic device with a Y-shaped channel, and the pumping and mixing performances were verified by the coupled piezoelectric-fluid transient analysis. In the pumping performance test, it was found that the pumping performance of the new actuator was improved by about 19 times compared with that of the conventional actuator. On the other hand, in the mixing performance test, the mixing index of the new actuator was improved by about 2.3 times compared with the conventional actuator. These results verify the superiority of the proposed new piezoelectric composite actuator in terms of both pumping and mixing performance in microfluidic systems.
