Microvalves pressure-driven

The p-Prv has been used for flow studies in microfluidic devices by many researchers. Meinhart et al. (1999) studied pressure-driven flow in a microchannel. Kim et al. (2001) studied electroosmotically driven flows in various microchannel configurations to examine their feasibility for micropumping and microvalve applications. Shinohara et al. (2004) studied two-phase uansient flow in microfluidic devices by using high-speed p-PIV. The laminar to turbulent flow transition in microtubes was studied by Sharp and Adrian (2004). Nguyen et al. 

Numbering up microchannels to large-scale capacity reactors is driven by a rigorous understanding of pressure drop in every parallel circuit Passive flow distribution permits sufficient flow to each channel. No serious evaluation of microvalves or actuators has been undertaken for high-capacity systems with thousands to tens... 

The American company IC-Sensors offers a thermomechanically driven microvalve (with 2/2-way functionality) for gases (Fig. 6.113) [315]. The valve consists of an elastically suspended valve reed and a rigid valve base with a valve opening. The valve reed can be put into motion using the thermomechanical (bimetallic) effect. The temperature of the bimetallic structure of aluminium and silicon is used to control the actuator force. The normally closed valves are designed for a maximum pressure of 10... 200kPa. Gas flows of up to 0.11/min are achieved with a driving power of 300 mW. 

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