Surface Mount Electroosmotic Pump for Integrated Microfluidic Printed Circuit Boards

Abstract

We demonstrate a packaged micropump with no moving parts, that can be surface mounted directly on a standard printed circuit substrate, allowing a fluidic layer to be integrated with the pump and the circuit. The pump uses a nanoporous membrane to create electro-osmotic flow, and uses standard microelectronic packaging technologies to enable the device to be integrated with microfluidics at the printed circuit level. The paper describes the fabrication and packaging processes of the pump, its integration into a microfluidic printed circuit board (microfluidic PCB), and characterizes the pump performance. Finally, it is demonstrated how different fluidic and electronic components (pump, and microfluidic heater component embedded with resistive heaters and temperature sensor) are packaged and integrated on the same microfluidic PCB to realize an integrated microfluidic device.