Universal fixture for assembling and testing of a silicon-based micro combustor

As part of an effort to develop MEMS-based power generation system, an assembly solution for combustion test of a recent-developed micro combustion device micromachined from single crystal silicon were proposed. In order to supply hydrogen/air to inlets of micro combustor from room temperature to over 700 degrees C at the pressure of 1 similar to 3bars, a stainless steel universal fixture was designed and fabricated for the combustion testing of prototype stacked by structured Si wafers of 21.5mm x 21.5mm in square. By precisely welding and polishing process in fabrication of the fixture, a metal plate with 18nm roughness was prepared for tightly connecting micro combuster with fuel inlet of 2mm, air inlet 4mm in diameter on the top wafer, while the gap between tubings to be hermetically joined to top plate is about 0.3mm. Primary combustion experiments have been conducted after igniting the fuel/air mixture in the micro chamber. Stable hydrogen-air combustion has been observed to sustain inside the combustion chamber with exit temperature over 1200 degrees C. During the combustion experiments, the silicon dies keep good mechanical integrity under assembly and no gas leakage is observed.http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000228835200015&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=8e1609b174ce4e31116a60747a720701Engineering, Electrical & ElectronicEngineering, MechanicalInstruments & InstrumentationMaterials Science, Characterization & TestingOpticsEICPCI-S(ISTP)