Proceedings of the ASME 2013 International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition

IMECE2013
November 15-21, 2013, San Diego, California, USA

IMECE2013-64127

THEORETICAL & EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE VALVE PUMPING FOR

HIGH FLOW RATE APPLICATIONS

Karthik Kumar Ali Besharatian

Department of Aerospace Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering and
University of Michigan, Computer Science
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Luis P. Bernal Rebecca L. Peterson Khalil Najafi

Department of Aerospace
Engineering
University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer
Science
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer
Science
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

ABSTRACT ! Velocity through valve

!" Velocity through transfer valve
A new valve-only micropump structure for gas !"# Density of the ambient conditions
applications is proposed consisting of electrostatically actuated ! Density of gas in stage 1
checkerboard microvalves with dual cavities. The valve-only ! Pressure in stage 1
multistage peristaltic design minimizes complexity and ! Pressure in stage 2
footprint of the device, which allows operation at high ! Electrostatic pressure
frequency, better sealing and efficient operation. A previously !"# Inlet pressure
developed reduced order model is used to design and analyze Viscosity
the performance of the system. In this paper the effect of the ! Electrode gap
cavity height on the performance and stability of this system is P Pressure in a given stage
explored. The fabricated micropump produced a flow rate of ! Total area of valve holes
140 l/min at 1 kHz operation despite the cavity and membrane ! Volume of stage 1
resonance being > 20 kHz. Four micropumps having cavity n polytropic constant
heights of 45, 60, 90 and 120 m are explored in the modeling specific heat capacity
efforts using sinusoidal waveforms. It is found that an optimum speed of sound
cavity height exists which maximizes pump performance. ! Membrane density
Decreasing the cavity height below this value increases ! Thickness of the membrane
acoustic pressure damping, which in turn increases instability ! Area of the membrane
of the system. Dielectric constant
! Gap between electrode and membrane
Keywords: Valve-only Micro pumps, MEMS, Electrostatic ! Instantaneous gap between electrode and membrane
Actuation, Peristaltic, Valve Timing.
! Number of holes on electrode
! Cavity/stage volume
NOMENCLATURE
! Volume between membrane and electrode
!" Inlet pressure for a given stage
Residual stress in the membrane
! Reference pressure
Poissons ratio
!"# Outlet Pressure for a given stage

1 Copyright 2013 by ASME

INTRODUCTION
There are increased interests in the development of
micropumps that can be integrated into portable gas sensors or
microprocessor coolers. Miniaturization of micropumps enables
easy integration as well as lower cost and power consumption.
Among these devices considerable interest lies in the
development of high-flow-rate roughing pumps for high
vacuum systems. To achieve this, researchers have proposed
different techniques using various actuation methods, valves
and pumping procedures. These methods of actuation can be
electrostatic [1], piezoelectric [2] electromagnetic [3], thermo
pneumatic [4] and Knudsen [5, 6]. Active and passive
techniques are employed for flow control. Most commonly
reported technique to achieve a desired flow rate or pressure is
by compression and transfer of gas using piezoelectric
actuation [6]. However, due to the complex fabrication,
electrostatic method of actuation has been pursued by the
authors, which has produced the maximum micropump flow
rate to date [7]. This pump utilizes a dual diaphragm with
perforations and is actuated electrostatically.
A frequently reported micropump design consists of one
pumping membrane and two valve membranes for compression
and transfer of the gas, respectively. The micropumps are
arranged in series to produce greater pressure differences or in
parallel to produce larger flow rates. In these designs with
active valves, the displacement of the valves cannot be
pump produced comparable flow rates when only the valve
membranes were actuated, which suggests that the active valves
contribute significantly to pumping. Mathematical models that
were previously developed could not capture these effects as
they were purely thermodynamic or the effects of membrane
volume displacement were ignored.
To study these effects, computational fluid dynamics
would not only be computationally intensive but also poses
stability and geometrical challenges. Kumar et al. [10]
developed a reduced order model that captures pumping
produced by the valves membrane. By operating the
micropump at 22 kHz, simulation results shows that the valves
perform most of the pumping effect compared to the pumping
membranes [11]. Experimental analysis of 4-stage devices
further confirms the theoretical results. From this theory, a new
design is conceived as shown in figure 2. The operation and
working of this device is shown in figure 3.
Figure 2: Schematic of a 4-stage micropump utilizing only
active valves.
1
Normalized Pressure in Stage 1

disregarded because it also contributes to the total volume 0

displacement especially when the valve membranes are -1
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Normalized Pressure in Stage 2
operated at the same frequency as the pumping membranes. 1
0
-1
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Opening of Inlet Valve
1
0.5
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Opening of Transfer Valve
1
0.5
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Time Period

Figure 3: Operation of active valve pumping in a 2-stage

micropump. First trace is the pressure in the top stage, second is
the pressure in the bottom stage. The third and fourth stages
show the positive flow through the inlet and transfer valves
respectively [11].

Figure 1: Design used by Besharatian et al. [9], involves a
single electrode and hexagonal membrane. The fabricated
device is a 24-stage micropump.
Figure 1 shows a micropump utilizing active valves and
pumping membrane. Kim et al. [8] designed a similar
micropump that comprised of active valves having an area of
1mm2 and pump membrane having an area of 4mm2. These
pumps are designed to be functional only when all three
membranes are actuated. However, Besharatian et al.s [9]
In Figure 2, a 4-stage micropump consists of 3 inlet/outlet
and 2 transfer valves. The valves are based on a checkerboard
design as shown in figure 4. Each valve membrane has holes
that are misaligned with the holes on the electrode, which
allows complete sealing when collapsed on the electrode. The
pump is operated at the resonance frequency (high frequency)
to achieve a high flow rate and maximum performance. In
Figure 2, the two valve membranes in each cavity are actuated
by sinusoidal waveforms having a phase difference between
them. Ideally when the pressure difference is favorable flow

2 Copyright 2013 by ASME

takes place from one stage to another and vice versa. While this
assumption seems drastic, the working of the device can be
easily explained in Figure 5.
Figure 4: Schematic of a checkerboard valve design. The blue
solid line represents the electrode while the red shows the valve
membrane.
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 5: Schematic of the working of the micropump. (a) and
(b) show the pumping action of the transfer valve while (c) and
(d) show the pumping action of the inlet outlet valves. The
black arrows show the flow direction while the blue show the
closing action of the valves. The green and red lines represent
the inlet/outlet and transfer valves respectively.
Figure 5(a) shows the flow through the transfer valve
between the top stage and the bottom stage. An applied voltage
difference pulls the transfer valve membrane in the direction of
the electrode as shown by the blue arrows in figure 5(b). Flow
through the valves during this motion is considered to be low
due to the higher resistance to the flow. When the voltage is
zero, the inlet/outlet valve membranes are released from the
electrode, allowing flow to take place while compressing the air
in the top stage and expanding the gas in the bottom stage. A
voltage is applied again to close the inlet/outlet valves and the
cyclic process is repeated.
This paper is divided into two parts, the first deals with the
experimental analysis of the micropump shown in figure 1 and
the second deals with the theoretical analysis. A previously
developed reduced order model by Kumar et al [9] is used to
design a 4-stage active valve micropump. Since the model has
been verified previously, in the present paper it is used only to
study and explain the experimental measurements.
3 Copyright 2013 by ASME
EXPERIMENTAL MEASUREMENTS
Analog Output
AI Channel 0
Analog Input
AI Channel1
Channel - 0
Channel - 2
Channel - 1
Omega Flowmeter
Pressure
Sensor
Pump
i/o Valve Membrane
Transfer Valve
Electrode
Figure 6: Experimental setup to analyze multistage vacuum
micropumps. No signal is applied to the pump membrane [9].
The two active valves of the 4-stage micropump,
inlet/outlet and transfer valves are actuated using sine and
cosine waveform respectively, each having amplitude of 120 V.
No signal is applied to the pump membrane as shown in figure
6. The sinusoidal signal is generated using MATLABs data
acquisition toolbox having a sample frequency of 10 MHz and
amplified using two TEGAM amplifiers. The gap between each
valve membrane and electrode is 8 m at the center. Due to the
non-uniform stress distribution on the electrode a curved
electrode is obtained on the valves. The cavity height in each
stage is 45 m.
! Figure 7: Flow generated by a 4-stage valve only micropump
[11].
A 4-stage vacuum micropump having the geometric
parameters shown in Table 1 produced a flow rate of nearly 140
l/min and pressures drop of 500 Pa at 1kHz, as shown in
figure 7. Besharatian et al. [11] described in detail the working
of the device. Theoretical analysis suggested that despite of the
absence of electric actuation, the pressure variation due to the
valve motion in each stage is able to produce significant The flow through the valves is governed by the pressure
deflection. In order to prevent this coupling, the pump difference across them and the resistance to the flow as shown
membranes were broken and the gap was filled with epoxy, as by the first and second terms in equation 1 respectively.
shown in figure 8.
!!! ! (!!"# !!! ) ! !! !!
= 8 (1)
!" !! !!"# !!"# !! ! !!
Properties Values
Square Membrane length
2mm The resistance to flow through the valves varies transiently
Top Cavity Height
45 m with the opening and closing of the valves. Kumar et al. [10]
Bottom Cavity Height
45 m used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to relate the change
Gap (Membrane/electrode) hg
4 m in resistance with the valve position as shown by equation 2.
NH (valve electrode)
1600
! = 10!!".!" !!!.!" (2)
Valve Holes Length
20 m
Number of Valve Holes 169 The valve position also affects the acceleration of fluid
(inertial length) through them. Equation 3 relates these two
Table 1: Geometric properties of a 4-stage micropump. parameters and its derivation is shown in [10].

! = 10!!.!" !!!.!"#$ (3)

The pressure change in a stage is due to flow through the

inlet/outlet valves, transfer valves and the volume change due
to the membrane deflection as shown by the first, second and
third term respectively in equation 4.

!" ! !! !! ! !!"# !! ! ! !!!

= !"# ! ! ! ! ! (4)
!" ! !! ! !! ! !! !"
! !
Figure 8: (Left) A micro fabricated 12-stage micropump, and Since the air is compressible the change in density is given
(Right) micropump with all the pump membranes removed by equation 5.
[11].
!!! ! !!!
MODEL SETUP = (5)
!" !! ! !"

To analyze and design the proposed micropump a

previously developed reduced order model for gas pumping,
proposed by Kumar et al. [10], is modified for the current
application. The model assumes that the acoustic wavelength is
much larger than the cavity size and the instantaneous pressure
is uniform in each stage. Damping and inertial effects are due
to the flow through the valves. The fabricated micropump
consists of a hexagonal membrane for better area utilization. A
square membrane having the same area is used instead of a
hexagonal membrane because developing a 1D model for a
hexagonal membrane is challenging. This serves as a good first Figure 9: Flow description through each valve for model setup.
order estimate. Membrane damping due to the gap is ignored
since the area ratio is nearly equal to or greater than 0.33. To drive the fluid motion, the membrane deflection is
In this section, the equations used to model the flow modeled using the 1-D equation proposed by Kumar et al [10].
through the valves, the pressure change in each cavity and the Equation 6 assumes that the membrane deflects in the first
membrane deflection is based on the setup proposed by Kumar mode and resulting in the maximum displacement at the center.
et al. [10]. The system here, is divided essentially into 3
components, which include the flow through the valves, !!! ! ! !!
! ! = ! ! + ! ! ! ! ! (6)
pressure change in each stage and the membrane deflection as !! !" !
shown in figure 9.
The left hand side in equation 6 represents the inertia
associated with the membrane mass. The terms on the right

4 Copyright 2013 by ASME

hand side are: the first term accounts for the pressure in stage 1,
the second accounts for the pressure in stage 2, the third is the
force produced by the non-linear structural deformation RESULTS & DISCUSSIONS
(discussed later) and the fourth is the electrostatic force. The
electrostatic pressure, which is directly proportional to the In the experimental section, the measured pump produced
square of the applied voltage, is given by equations 7 and 8. flow only at frequencies less than 1 kHz. At higher frequencies,
no flow was measured. The cavity resonance is inversely
!! (!! !!! !! ) ! ! !! related to the volume (~20 kHz) and the resonant frequency of
! = (7) the membrane is nearly ~35 kHz. Therefore, the device is
! !! !!
expected to operate at these frequencies to produce flow.
!! ! However flow rate was measured only at frequencies
= ! !.!"#
(8)
!!
!! ! significantly lower than these resonant frequencies.
!!
Experimental understanding of this baffling phenomenon is
challenging due to the size of the device and the nature of the
The volume in each stage at a given instant due to the
membranes. We have used the reduced order model to provide
membrane deflection is given by equation 9 while equation 10
insights into this question.
is the rate of change of the volume.
Since the device behaves as a Helmholtz resonator, the
! ! cavity volume affects the resonant acoustic frequency of the
= ! ! !"# ! !"# (9) device. Here, four cavity volumes of 45, 60, 90 and 120 m are
!! !!
studied. The actuating signals are sine and cosine waveforms
!"(!) ! !!!"# (!) ! !!!"# (!) for the inlet/outlet and transfer valves respectively having
= ! ! (10)
amplitudes of 70 and 100 V. Figure 10 suggests that decreasing
!" !! !" !! !"
the cavity volume shifts the resonant frequency significantly.
However, increasing the cavity volume beyond a certain
Material T (m) E(GPa) optimum value decreases the flow performance. When the
(kg/m3) (MPa) cavity volume is low, the device behaves randomly. It was
SiO2 0.5 250 2200 0.17 -150 observed that achieving convergence was significantly harder
Si3N4 0.25 70 3100 0.23 1100 when 45 and 60 m cavities were used. In Figure 11, the
Cr 0.1 279 7150 0.21 450 voltage is increased to 100 V and a similar trend is observed.
Au 0.5 70 19300 0.44 -100 Convergence for many frequencies using the 45 and 60 m
Average 1.85 105 7210.8 0.2532 65 cavities were very difficult and is shown as zero flow in figure
11. Thus the reduced order model simulations show that for
Table 2: Material properties of the pump and valve cavity heights below 60 m instabilities in the system
membranes. developed despite the voltage applied.
The displacement of the membranes and the pressure
Holes are fabricated on the valves membranes and on the variation in each stage is studied to further explore the behavior
electrode in a checkerboard pattern such that there are open of this phenomenon when the pump is operated at 3 kHz with
flow paths when the membrane is apart from the electrode and cavity heights of 60 and 90 m. Each 4-stage pump consists of
close flow paths when the membrane is collapsed against the 2 pumps connected in series. Figures 12 and 13 suggest that at
electrode. The center-to-center distance between each hole on the lower frequencies, the membrane oscillates with
the valve membrane is 70m and the holes are of a square size significantly longer duration due to the non-linear behavior of
of 20 m. A total of 169 holes are used on the membrane. the system.
Kumar et al [10] used the properties shown in Table 1, to The membrane restoring force, the pressure from the
estimate the resonant frequencies in COMSOL for the valve cavities and the electrostatic force of actuation governs the
membranes, which was 35.6 kHz. To account for the structural deflection of the membrane. When the cavity height is 90 m,
stiffening due to nonlinear deflection they proposed a the the damping in the system due to the acoustic pressure is lower
mathematical relation based on the static load and maximum than for cavity height of 60 m. With the lower acoustic
deflection shown in equation 11. pressure, the displacement of the membrane is larger, thereby
compressing the gas to a greater extent, which produces larger
! flow and greater stability in the system.
= 4.7110!" ! + 4.193610! ! (11)

Equations 111 are combined and solved using

MATLABs ode45 solver. The initial conditions are
atmospheric pressure in each stage and zero flow through each
valve. Convergence is achieved when the pressure variation
from cycle to cycle is 1e-5.

5 Copyright 2013 by ASME

Figure 10: Flow rate vs actuation frequency for different cavity
heights when operated using sine and cosine waveforms having
amplitude of 70 V.
Figure 11: Flow rate vs actuation frequency for different cavity
heights when operated using sine and cosine waveforms having
amplitude of 100V.
Figure 12: Velocity through each valve when convergence is
achieved with cavity height of 60 m. The first, second and
third trace represents the flow through the inlet, transfer and
outlet valves respectively. The blue and dotted green dotted
lines represent the flow through the membranes in pump 1 and
2 respectively.
6 Copyright 2013 by ASME
Figure 13: Velocity through each valve when convergence is
achieved with cavity height of 90 m. The first, second and
third trace represents the flow through the inlet, transfer and
outlet valves respectively. The blue and dotted green lines
represent the flow through the membranes in pump 1 and 2
respectively.
Figure 14: Pressure in each stage when the cavity height is 60
m and operated at 70V. The blue and green lines represent the
pressure distribution in stage 1 and 2 respectively of 4-stage
device.
Figure 14 and 15 for a cavity height of 60 and 90 m,
respectively operated at 70 V suggest that the pressure
oscillations for the pump having a cavity height of 90m are
more uniform. The pressure difference between successive
stages is also larger for the 90m pump. The decreased in the
cavity height increases the resonant frequency but also
increases acoustic pressure damping and instability of the
system. Therefore, the experiment data suggests that the
maximum flow produced by the micropump at 1 kHz is due to
the cavity height and the instability of the system at the higher
frequencies.

Figure 15: Pressure in each stage when the cavity height is 90
m and operated at 70 V. The blue and green lines represent the
pressure distribution in pumps 1 and 2 respectively of 4-stage
device.
CONCLUSIONS
A new valve only design is proposed to achieve a high
flow rate based on a previous three-membrane design. The
valve only design simplifies fabrication as well as operation
and works on the resonant frequency of the device.
Experimental analysis of this device suggested that a
significantly larger flow rate of 140 l/min can be achieved.
The cavity height used was 45 m. The design was based on
the hypothesis that lowering the cavity height would increase
the flow rate but create a pressure drop. However the flow rate
was achieved at 1 kHz. Therefore, a previously verified reduced
order model is used to study this phenomenon, which showed
that decreasing the cavity height increases the resonant
frequency until an optimum height. At this optimum frequency,
the flow rate produced is the highest. Lowering the cavity
height below this optimum value increases the instability of the
system. The pump produces flow at lower frequencies due to
the increased oscillations in the system. Therefore, the valve
only pump design requires an optimum cavity height that
possesses low acoustic pressure damping.
Further theoretical analysis needs to be carried out to study
the effect of valve area and the effect of waveforms. The valve
area should decrease when the resonance frequency of the
system is increased. Valve area needs to be optimized such that
the instability in the system is minimized. Finally the effect of
the operating voltage on the instability of the system should be
investigated in the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Research sponsored by DARPA Contract W31P4Q-09-1-
0011, and the Engineering Research Centers Shared Facilities
supported by the National Science Foundation under Award
Number EEC-0096866.
REFERENCES
7 Copyright 2013 by ASME
[1] Astle, A., Paige, A., Bernal, L. P., Munfakh, J., Kim, H.,
and Najafi, K., "Analysis and design of multistage
electrostatically-actuated micro vacuum pumps," ASME.
[2] Koch, M., Harris, N., Maas, R., Evans, A. G. R., White, N.
M., and Brunnschweiler, A., 1999, "A novel micropump design
with thick-film piezoelectric actuation," Measurement Science
and Technology, 8(1), p. 49.
[3] Kim, H. T., Park, J. W., and Kim, H., "All-electric
peristaltic vacuum pump utilizing electromagnetic and
hydraulic actuation with a highly flexible latex membrane,"
Proc. Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems
Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International, IEEE,
pp. 2454-2457.
[4] Lung-Jieh, Y., and Tzu-Yuan, L., 2011, "A PDMS-based
thermo-pneumatic micropump with Parylene inner walls,"
Microelectron. Eng., 88(8), pp. 1894-1897.
[5] Naveen, K.G., An, S. Gianchandani, Y.B.., 2012, "A Si-
micromachined 48-stage Knudsen pump for on-chip vacuum,"
Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 22(10), p.
105026.
[6] Santiago, D. J. L. a. J. G., 2004, "A review of micropumps,"
Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 14(6), p.
R35.
[7] Cabuz, C., Herb, W. R., Cabuz, E. I., and Lu, S. T., "The
dual diaphragm pump," Proc. Micro Electro Mechanical
Systems, 2001. MEMS 2001. The 14th IEEE International
Conference on, IEEE, pp. 519-522.
[8] Hanseup, K., Steinecker, W. H., Reidy, S., Lambertus, G.
R., Astle, A. A., Najafi, K., Zellers, E. T., Bernal, L. P.,
Washabaugh, P. D., and Wise, K. D., "A Micropump-Driven
High-Speed MEMS Gas Chromatography System," Proc.
Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems Conference,
2007. TRANSDUCERS 2007. International, pp. 1505-1508.
[9] Besharatian, A., Kumar, K., Peterson, R. L., Bernal, L. P.,
and Najafi, K., "A scalable, modular, multi-stage, peristaltic,
electrostatic gas micro-pump," Proc. Micro Electro Mechanical
Systems (MEMS), 2012 IEEE 25th International Conference
on, IEEE, pp. 1001-1004.
[10] Kumar, K. Besharatian, A., Bernal, L.P., Perterson, R., and
Najafi, K., "A Multiphysics Reduced Order Model for Valve
Pumping in a 4-stage Micropump," Proc. International
Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, November
2012 - 87861.
[11] Besharatian, A., Kumar, K., Peterson, R. L., Bernal, L. P.,
and Najafi, K., 'Valve-Only Pumping in Mechnaical Gas
Micropumps', forthcoming in IEEE Transducers'13, Barcelona,
SPAIN, Jun. 16-20, 2013.

8 Copyright 2013 by ASME