Increasing Performance of a Microactuator Based on a Hydrogen–Oxygen Mixture Explosion

Microfluidic devices are interesting for chemical, biological, and medical applications. However, their widespread use is hampered by the lack of compact and efficient actuators that push fluid through channels. A promising actuator based on the explosion of a hydrogen–oxygen mixture outperforms other microdrives by orders of magnitude in terms of the force density, has a moderate power consumption and compact size. But the actuator has a relatively low operating frequency of 0.1 Hz. Eliminating secondary explosions increases the frequency up to 1 Hz, and increasing the volume of the working chamber provides additional enhancement to 20 Hz.