Thermal analysis and design of thermo-pneumatic pumping

Thermal analysis on the thermopneumatic pump to be used in the PCR chip is performed to understand the relation between chamber pressure and temperature field. For the need of to-and-fro movement of the droplet in micro PCR chip, a thermoelectric cooler is adopted in the design of the thermopneumatic pump, the analysis indicates that the cooler must be set on the glass side and be controlled at 10??C. The analytical results show that the chamber pressure goes up rapidly, then maintains almost a steady value, and at last goes down quickly on the operation condition of high power heating in a very short time at first, then low power heating for several seconds, and at last turning off the heater.EI04685-6872