Oral care appliance using pulsed fluid flow
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips N.V.
InventorsYu-Wen Chang, Gregory Russ Goddard
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An oral care appliance comprises: a fluid pump assembly (46); a source of liquid (50); and a source of gas (12), wherein the pump is in operative communication with the sources of liquid and gas to produce a series of gas-injected fluid pulses, directed to a nozzle assembly (80) from which the resulting pulses are directed to the teeth. The individual pulses have a pulse width in the range of 0.001-0.5 seconds, a pulse height from 0.1-10 Newtons, and a rise/fall time range of 0.5-250 ms, a repetition rate in the range of 2 Hz to 20 Hz. The gas/liquid mixture range from 40-95% volume to volume, gas to liquid.
Claims5
An oral care appliance, comprising:
- a fluid pump assembly;
- a source of liquid;
- a source of gas, and
- a microcontroller wherein the fluid pump assembly is in operative communication with the sources of liquid and gas to produce a series of gas-injected fluid pulses output via at least one orifice of a nozzle exit assembly from which the series of gas-injected fluid pulses are directed to a user's teeth, and wherein the microcontroller is programmed to control an operation of the fluid pump assembly to produce individual pulses of the series of gas-injected fluid pulses effective against biofilm on teeth that have each individual pulse of the series of pulses has a pulse width within a range of 0.001-0.5 seconds, a pulse height from 0.1-10 Newtons, a rise/fall time range of 0.5-250 ms, at least one sub-pulse, a repetition rate in a range of 2 Hz to 20 Hz, and a gas/liquid mixture range from 40-95% volume to volume, gas to liquid.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.