An Experimental Study on the Pumping Performance of Molecular Drag Pumps

The pumping performance of molecular drag pumps (MDP) has been investigated experimentally. The exporimented MDPs are a disk-type drag pump (DTDP), helical-type drag pump(HTDP) and compound drag pump (CDP), respectively In the case of the DTDP, spiral channels of a rotor are cut on both upper surface and lower surface of a rotating disk, and the corresponding stator is a planar disk. In the case of the HTDP, the rotor has six rectangular grooves. The CDP consists with the DTDP, at lower part, and with the HTDP, at upper part. The experiments are performed in the outlet pressure range of $0.2{\sim}533Pa$. The inlet pressure and compression ratio are measured under the various conditions of outlet pressure and throughputs, and nitrogen is used for the test gas. At the outlet pressure of 0.2Pa, the ultimate pressure has been reached to $1.0{\times}10^{-2}Pa$ for the HTDP, $1.3{\times}10^{-4}Pa$ for the DTDP, and $3.6{\times}10^{-5}Pa$ for the CDP. The maximum compression ratio of the CDP is much higher than those of the DTDP or HTDP. Consequently, the ultimate pressure of the CDP is the lowest one.