Optically driven viscous micropump using a rotating microdisk

An optically driven micropump using viscous drag exerted on a rotating disk microrotor was developed. The disk microrotor (diameter of 10 mu m), which has three columns as targets for the optical trap, is confined to a U-shaped microchannel. To pump fluid, the disk microrotor is rotated by a time-shared optical trapping technique. The flow field inside the U-shaped microchannel was analyzed using finite element method (FEM) based on the Navier-Stokes equation. The optimized micropump was fabricated using a two-photon microfabrication technique. The flow rate of the micropump agreed with simulation result obtained by FEM analysis. (C) 2007 American Institute of Physics.