A Controllable and Integrated Pump-enabled Microfluidic Chip and Its Application in Droplets Generating

A microfluidic chip with a controllable and integrated piezoelectric pump was proposed and demonstrated, where the pump was designed as a micro-actuator based on polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) organic piezoelectric film. In this case, the pump should integrate with the microfluidics device very well into one chip. The flow rate can be precisely controlled in the range of 0–300 µl/min for water by tuning the V(pp) and frequency of Alternating Current (AC) voltage applied on the diaphragm. To analyze the relationship between the flow rate and the deflection of diaphragm, the deformations of diaphragm at different voltages were researched. The displacement of diaphragm was defined as 17.2 µm at the voltages of 3.5 kV, 5 Hz when the pump chamber was full of water. We have used the integrated microfluidic chip with two pumps for droplet generation to demonstrate its great potential for application in droplet-based microfluidic chip.