Ph.D. Dissertation Defense by Jemmy Sutanto Bintoro
Thursday, November 18, 2004

(Dr. Peter J. Hesketh, Chair)

"An Electromagnetic Actuated Microvalve Fabricated on a Single Wafer"

Abstract

Microvalves are essential components of the miniaturization of the fluidic systems to control of fluid flow in a variety of applications as diverse as chemical analysis systems, micro-fuel cells, and integrated fluidic channel arrangements for electronic cooling. Using microvalves, these systems offer important advantages: they can operate using small sample volumes and provide rapid response time.

This PhD dissertation presents the world first electromagnetically actuated microvalve fabricated on a single wafer with CMOS compatibility. In this dissertation, the design, fabrication, and testing results of two different types of electromagnetic microvalves are presented: the on/off microvalve and the bistable microvalve with latching mechanism. The microvalves operates with the power consumption of less than 1.5 W and can control the volume flow rate of DI water or a 50% diluted methanol solution in the range 1 – 50 µL/min. The leaking rate of the on/off microvalve is the order of 30 nL/min. The microvalve demonstrated a response time for latching of 10 ms in water and 0.2 ms in air. This work has resulted in a US patent, application no. 10/699,210.Other inventions that have been developed as a result of this research are a bidirectional, and bistable-bidirectional microactuators with latching mechanism, that can be utilized for optical switch, RF relay, micro mirror, nano indenter, or nano printings.