A Large Flowrate Electroosmotic Pump With Micron Pores

This paper presents a description of the design, fabrication, and characterization of a novel, high flowrate electroosmotic pump designed for microcooling applications. The prototype pumps demonstrated a flowrate of 7 ml/min for 200 V applied potential that is suitable for two-phase heat exchangers with a capacity approaching 100 W. This pump uses electroosimotic flow (EOF) to drive the flow and is compact with no moving parts. The pump structure is produced by chemically treating and further sintering an ultrafine glass frit (filter). The frits we use are porous cylinders 30 mm in diameter and 3 mm (varying from 1.5 to 3 mm) thick and provide the high wetted-surface-to-volume ratio required to generate pressures exceeding 2 arm. Both deionized (DI) water and buffered aqueous solutions have been used as working fluids. Experiments have been conducted to characterize the pump performance and investigate its physical properties such as the structure porosity, tortuosity, effective pore size, finite double layer effects, and the dependence of zeta potential on ionic conductivity of the working solution.