Micro screw pump using electrostatic force

A micro pump is one of the most essential components in μTAS. However, conventional pumping systems have some difficulties to be miniaturized because it requires a power source. In this paper, we propose a novel micro screw pump driven by electrostatic force. Since the electrostatic force becomes dominant in micro region, it may be an effective driving source for micro pump. We propose an electrostatic drive principle of a screw pump using three-phase AC input. The micro screw pump is composed of a stator having flexible printed dircuits and a screw covered with a PET sheet. The drive experiments confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed driving principle and successful pumping with the developed micro screw pump at a flow rate of 111.4 μl/s.