To reduce the power consumption of the microvalve

a novel magnetic bistable system is presented.The system comprises two RbFeB permanent ring magnets and one soft magnet.Steel and nickel-iron alloy are selected as the soft magnetic materials for study.The magnetic force acting on the soft magnet in the field of one or two permanent ring magnets are calculated with the finite element methods.The FEM calculations suggest that a soft magnet whose radius is about 10 % larger than that of ring magnets can obtain a maximum force.By adjusting the distance between the two ring magnets

the magnetic force on the soft magnet can be 30 % larger than the one got from a single magnet.Experiments are made to verify the simulation results and the results show that the magnetic bistable system is well adapted to microvalve applications.