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Electrically actuated sacrificial membranes for valving in microsystems

Valving is essential to microflow circuits and networks in microsystem technology. Many different types of valves have been designed and fabricated. Membranes of sacrificial material have already been designed for one-shot valving. However, the new design proposed here, based on sacrificial micro-membranes with embedded electrodes, has the advantages of being efficient, easily controllable and requiring very low energy levels. We have shown that a 100 µm × 100 µm × 500 nm Si3N4 membrane with a platinum electrode can be actuated to break up with an energy input of only 6 µJ, during an actuation time of 200 µs. At rest, in the absence of actuation, such membranes can withstand a pressure of 1 bar. The goal of the development of such membranes is to hydrodynamically connect, one by one, a series of initially isolated micro-chambers implemented in a silicon chip.