Jet flow in a circulatory miniaturized system using ion wind

This paper applies our recent approach to generate a circulatory jet flow within a confined space using ionic wind by the corona discharge. A millimetre-scaled prototype with bipolar discharge configuration, which consists of two pin electrodes, nozzle, working chamber, two circulating channels and three hotwires, was designed, manufactured and investigated. A dielectric barrier of 1.0 mm thickness, installed between the parallel electrodes of opposite polarity, is utilized in order to possibly minimize the inter-electrode distance, provide a smooth current-voltage discharge characteristic and prevent electrical spark. The experimental results demonstrate that the jet flow circulates inside the device with a average velocity of 0.7 m/s. The characteristics of flow by experiment are in reasonable agreement with the numerical analysis using the finite-volume method. The device specifications were investigated with several parameters including the discharge voltage on the electrode and the heating power on hotwires. In addition, the dependence of packaging conditions on the discharge process and the effect of alternating current on the generation of ion wind are also presented. The device has low power consumption of 33 mW, and great versatility for applications in fluidic inertial sensors, fluidic amplifiers or gas mixing.