Vibrating Piezoelectric Mesh Nebulizer Designs

Microchip Technology’s vibrating mesh nebulizer reference design provides a unique implementation for cost-effective drug delivery devices. Medical nebulizers are drug delivery devices that reduce a liquid medication to extremely fine cloud-like particles and deliver them directly to the airways for respiratory therapy. Medical nebulizers are commonly used for the treatment of COPD, asthma, cystic fibrosis, and other respiratory diseases. Nebulizers tend to be divided into three categories (jet, ultrasonic, and mesh) with each type of nebulizer having its own relative strengths. Recently there have been many improvements in mesh nebulizers. Mesh nebulizers force liquid medications through multiple apertures in a mesh or aperture plate to generate aerosol droplets. This type of nebulizer has the advantages of being small and portable, powered by batteries, and silent in operation. It yields shorter treatment times, gives increased output efficiency, and has minimal residual volume. Other advantages include a predominantly fine-particle fraction that reaches into the peripheral lung and the ability to nebulize in low drug volumes.

The integrated core independent peripherals (CIPs) on Microchip’s PIC16F1713 8-bit MCU significantly offload the MCU’s core in handling the control functions of a piezoelectric transducer mesh nebulizer. These functions include driving the boost and piezo output stages. Microchip’s MCUs with CIP are designed to handle tasks independently with no code or supervision from the MCU’s core during operation. Using CIP can shorten the development time of complex control systems, reduce the design’s component count, board size, and power consumption, and give designers the flexibility to innovate.

Resources

• Design Files
• BOM: Vibrating Piezoelectric Mesh Nebulizer Designs