Digital Microflow Controllers Using Fluidic Digital-to-Analog Converters with Binary-Weighted Flow Resistor Network

This paper presents digital microflow controllers(DMFC), where a fluidic digital-to-analog converter(DAC) is used to achieve high-linearity, fine-level flow control for applications to precision biomedical dosing systems. The fluidic DAC, composed of binary-weighted flow resistance, controls the flow-rate based on the ratio of the flow resistance to achieve high-precision flow-rate control. The binary-weighted flow resistance has been specified by a serial or a parallel connection of an identical flow resistor to improve the linearity of the flow-rate control, thereby making the flow-resistance ratio insensitive to the size uncertainty in flow resistors due to micromachining errors. We have designed and fabricated three different types of 4-digit DMFC: Prototype S and P are composed of the serial and the parallel combinations of an identical flow resistor, while Prototype V is based on the width-varied flow resistors. In the experimental study, we perform a static test for DMFC at the forward and backward flow conditions as well as a dynamic tests at pulsating flow conditions. The fabricated DMFC shows the nonlinearity of 5.0% and the flow-rate levels of 16(2$^{N}$) for the digital control of 4(N) valves. Among the 4-digit DMFC fabricated with micromachining errors, Prototypes S and P show 27.2% and 27.6% of the flow-rate deviation measured from Prototype V, respectively; thus verifying that Prototypes S and P are less sensitive to the micromachining error than Prototype V.V.

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