Pressurized Heterogeneous Thin Films of Martensitic Materials

Abstract

The explosive growth of micro systems has created a great need for the development of microfluid devices. These devices including micropumps and microvalves have a wide range of applications in fields such as drug delivery, inkjet printing and cooling systems of electronic circuits. In such applications, micropumps with large pumping volume per cycle and high pumping pressure are essential to successfully control microfluid. They need high stroke to achieve large fluid displacement, and large actuation energy density to transmit high force. However, traditional MEMS-integrated micropumps are limited both in stroke and actuation force; as a result, the typical output pressure of these pumps is in the order of several tens of kPa.