The "One drop" ferrofluidic pump with analog control

In this paper a novel ferrofluidic pump is proposed. The architecture is free of mechanical moving parts and is based on a single drop of ferrofluid as the active mass, thus improving the device reliability. This solution allows for a non-invasive implementation of a pumping mechanism (or a flow regulation) into preexistent non-metallic pipes(such as veins in a visionary context, etc.), without the real need of breaking the pipe: to implement the pumping mechanism, a single drop of ferrofluid is injected into the fluid inside the pipe while an "all-in-one" driving system is externally clamped in the pipe. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.