A rapid prototyped thermal mass flowmeter

Abstract

An innovative rapid prototyping technique for embedding microcomponents in PDMS replicas was developed and applied on a thermal mass flowmeter for closed loop micropump flowrate control. Crucial flowmeter design and thermal parameters were investigated with a 3‐D fully coupled electro‐thermal‐fluidic model which was built in Comsol Multiphysics 5.2. The flowmeter was characterized for three distinct measuring configurations. For precise low flowrate applications, a sensor‐heater‐sensor flowmeter configuration with a constant heater temperature was found to be the most appropriate yielding the measuring range of 0 to 90 μL∙min‐1 and the sensitivity of 1.3 °C∙μL−1∙min in the lower flowrate range of 0 to 40 μL∙min−1.