SMA micro pump chip to flow liquids and gases

This paper describes SMA micro pump chip with high performance. This chip can flow not only liquids but also gases (12μl/min., 25kPa for water, 11μl/min., 5kPa for air). Moreover, the micro pump is tolerant of gas bubbles in the liquid chamber and it is possible to prime by itself. To achieve this performance, the micro pump improved three elements. The first one is eliminating pressure loss of the check valves. The second one is optimizing flow pattern inside the deformable chamber. And the third one is increasing compressibility of the deformable chamber. The micro pump chip was fabricated using our original method of hybrid micro stereo lithography (hybrid-IH process). Therefore, their packaging without leakage was made successfully.