Droplet delivery device with push ejection

Inventors

Hunter, Charles Eric • Scoggin, Michael • Miller, Jeffrey • Salazar, Jose • Beach, Brian • Modlin, Caley • Culpepper, Matthew • Li, Jianqiang • Li, Chengjie • Wang, Shi Bo • Lee, Chao-Ping • Rapp, Gregory • Clements, Judson Sidney

Assignees

Pneuma Respiratory Inc

Abstract

A droplet delivery device includes a housing with a mouthpiece port or outlet from a nasal device for releasing fluid droplets, a fluid reservoir, and an ejector bracket having a membrane positioned between a mesh with a plurality of openings and a vibrating member that is coupled to an electronic transducer, such as an ultrasonic transducer. The transducer vibrates the vibrating member which causes the membrane to push fluid supplied by the reservoir through the mesh to generate droplets in an ejected stream released through the outlet.

Core Innovation

The invention relates to a droplet delivery device that includes a container assembly with a mouthpiece port and a reservoir configured to supply a volume of fluid. An ejector bracket is disposed in fluid communication with the reservoir and includes a mesh with a membrane operably coupled to a vibrating member, with the membrane positioned between the vibrating member and the mesh.

The vibrating member is coupled to an electronic transducer and is operable to oscillate to generate an ejected stream of droplets through the mesh openings. The droplet stream is directed within the container assembly by an ejection channel configured to direct the ejected stream of droplets from the mesh to an outlet.

Additional structural refinements include a reservoir self-sealing mating mechanism to couple to a fluid release mating mechanism of the ejector bracket, a slanted upper surface on the membrane configured to contact the fluid supplied from the reservoir, and a mesh configured with a bottom surface in a non-parallel configuration with an upper surface of the membrane. Further refinements include a central axis passing through the ejection channel and the membrane, a vibrating member tip coupling to the membrane at a position offset from the central axis, and an exterior hydrophilic coating on the membrane opposite the surface contacting the vibrating member.

Claims Coverage

The claim set provided contains seven independent claim formulations. Across these claims, the coverage is organized around a reservoir-fed droplet delivery device with a vibrating membrane/mesh structure driven by an electronic transducer, producing an ejected droplet stream through through-thickness mesh openings and routed via an internal ejection channel to an outlet, with additional optional refinements regarding reservoir coupling, membrane geometry, vibrating member tip geometry, mesh-to-membrane non-parallel arrangement, central-axis offset, and membrane surface coating.

Across the independent claims, the core coverage is directed to a reservoir-fed droplet delivery device that uses an electronic transducer to oscillate a vibrating member and a membrane positioned between the vibrating member and a mesh with through-thickness openings, thereby generating an ejected stream of droplets through the mesh. The droplet stream is routed to an outlet via an internal ejection channel, with optional refinements specifying self-sealing reservoir-to-ejector mating, slanted membrane fluid-contact surface, ring-shaped beveled or non-beveled vibrating member tip, non-parallel mesh-to-membrane configuration, central-axis offset of the tip coupling, and a hydrophilic coating on the membrane exterior surface.

Stated Advantages

Documented Applications

No documented applications found