Characterization of micromachined cantilever valves

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Abstract
This paper reports the fabrication and simulation of micromachined cantilever valves. For quasi-static fluid - structural simulations, the FEM package ANSYS and the CFD package Flow3D are coupled with a control programme to yield the flow rate for the cantilever valve. The results are compared with micromachined cantilever valves. The fabrication of these valves can be subdivided into the generation of cantilevers and ducts via KOH etching and a final fusion bonding step to join them. For the release of the cantilever, toluene is used to avoid stiction while drying the chips. Agreement between measured and simulated flow rates is shown to be good and gives confidence in the use of this simulator for valve development. Dynamic simulations are established with an impact model of the cantilever sitting on top of the duct. This allows the prediction of the dynamic behaviour of cantilever valves.