A study of the performance of microfabricated electroosmotic pump

Microfabricated planar electroosmotic (EO) pump is an innovative micro pump which promotes chip-level integration in micro devices such as micro cooling and micro combustion systems. A numerical model for this kind of micro pump was established avoiding the use of Boltzmann equation and is able to simulate the performance of the microfabricated EO pump with the depth comparable to the EDL thickness. A fabrication process was designed and several EO micro pump protocols were fabricated successfully. Both experimental and numerical studies were carried out. The results from the experiments and numerical simulation agreed with each other well. The effects of pump depth, fluid temperature, applied voltage and bulk ionic concentration on the pumping performance were studied.