Frequency-controlled wireless passive microfluidic devices

Microfluidics is a promising technology that is increasingly attracting the attention of researchers due to its high efficiency and low-cost features. Micropumps, micromixers, and microvalves have been widely applied in various biomedical applications due to their compact size and precise dosage controllability. Nevertheless, despite the vast amount of research reported in this research area, the ability to implement these devices in portable and implantable applications is still limited. To date, such devices are constricted to the use of wires, or on-board power supplies, such as batteries. This thesis presents novel techniques that allow wireless control of passive microfluidic devices using an external radiofrequency magnetic field utilizing thermopneumatic principle. Three microfluidic devices are designed and developed to perform within the range of implantable drug-delivery devices. To demonstrate the wireless control of microfluidic devices, a wireless implantable thermopneumatic micropump is presented. Thermopneumatic pumping with a maximum flow rate of 2.86 μL/min is realized using a planar wirelessly-controlled passive inductor-capacitor heater. Then, this principle was extended in order to demonstrate the selective wireless control of multiple passive heaters. A passive wirelessly-controlled thermopneumatic zigzag micromixer is developed as a mean of a multiple drug delivery device. A maximum mixing efficiency of 96.1% is achieved by selectively activating two passive wireless planar inductor-capacitor heaters that have different resonant frequency values. To eliminate the heat associated with aforementioned wireless devices, a wireless piezoelectric normally-closed microvalve for drug delivery applications is developed. A piezoelectric diaphragm is operated wirelessly using the wireless power that is transferred from an external magnetic field. Valving is achieved with a percentage error as low as 3.11% in a 3 days long-term functionality test. The developed devices present a promising implementation of the reported wireless actuation principles in various portable and implantable biomedical applications, such as drug delivery, analytical assays, and cell lysis devices

Wireless powered thermo-pneumatic micropump using frequency-controlled heater

This paper reports a novel, wirelessly powered micropump based on thermo-pneumatic actuation using a frequency-controlled heater. The micropump operates wirelessly through the energy transfer to a frequency-dependent heater, which was placed underneath the heating chamber of the pump. Heat is generated at the wireless heater when the external magnetic field is tuned to the resonant frequency of the heater. The enclosed air in the chamber expands and forces the liquid to flow out from the reservoir. The developed device is able to pump a total volume of 4 ml in a single stroke when the external field frequency is tuned to the resonant frequency of the heater at the output power of 0.22 W. Multiple strokes pumping are feasible to be performed with the volume variation of ~2.8% between each stroke. Flow rate performance of the micropump ranges from 1.01 µL/min to 5.24 µL/min by manipulating the heating power from 0.07 W to 0.89 W. In addition, numerical simulation was performed to study the influence of the heat transfer to the sample liquid. The presented micropump exclusively offers a promising solution in biomedical implantation devices due to its remotely powered functionality, free from bubble trapping and biocompatible feature

Modeling and control of piezoelectric stack actuators with hysteresis

Piezoelectric actuators are popularly applied as actuators in high precision systems due to their small displacement resolution, fast response and simple construction. However, the hysteresis nonlinear behavior limits the dynamic modeling and tracking control of piezoelectric actuators. This thesis studies a dynamic model of a moving stage driven by piezoelectric stack actuator. The Bouc-Wen model is introduced and analyzed to express the nonlinear hysteresis term of the piezoelectric stack actuator, where the values of the parameters of the model have been taken from a previous work. The simulated results using MATLAB/Simulink demonstrate the existence of the hysteresis phenomenon between the input voltage and the output displacement of the piezoelectric stack actuator, and validate the correctness of the model. Moreover, a Luenberger observer is designed to estimate the hysteresis nonlinearity of the system, and then combined with the voltage input signal to form a Luenberger-based feedforward controller to control the displacement of the system. Furthermore, a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) feedback controller is integrated with the feedforward controller to achieve more accurate output displacement, where the gains of the PID controller are optimized using Particle Swarm Optimization. Several performance index formulas have been studied to get the best solution of the PID’s gains. An Integral Time Squared Error plus Absolute Error performance index formula has been proposed to achieve zero overshoot and steady-state error. The simulated results accomplished using MATLAB/Simulink show the ability of the designed controllers to vastly reduce the amount of error of the output displacement and the response time of the system