Dynamic characteristics of a piezoelectric driven inkjet printhead fabricated using MEMS technology

To understand the residual vibration of the piezoelectric diaphragm in a piezo (PZT) driven inkjet printhead fabricated on silicon wafers by MEMS manufacturing process, the transfer function of the piezo velocity to sinusoidal input voltage is obtained in the experiments. The piezo velocity can be predicted using the obtained velocity transfer function with discrete Fourier transform of a trapezoidal waveform. In the low amplitude of voltage waveform, the spectrum shows a good agreement between the predicted and measured velocities of the piezo diaphragm. However, when the drop is ejected from the nozzle orifice with actual amplitude of the voltage waveform, the spectrum of the piezo velocity shows more complicated frequency components due to the reflected pressure waves and fluid motion inside the chamber. In this study it has been attempted to obtain the transfer function of the piezo velocity to the voltage input when the drops are fired. The simulated results of the piezo displacement with the various durations of the voltage waveform show a good agreement with the drop volume and velocity measured in experiments. In addition, it was found that suppressing the residual oscillations was closely related to eliminating the satellite drop formation, which was confirmed with the strobe stand drop visualization.     

Effects of trapped air bubbles on frequency responses of the piezo-driven inkjet printheads and visualization of the bubbles using synchrotron X-ray

The reliability of drop formation is one of the key factors for the successful commercialization of inkjet printing applications. However, when the air bubble is entrapped from the nozzle exit, it leads to stop jetting of the droplets immediately. It has been known that the trapped air bubbles inside the chamber prevent a printhead from stable jetting. In this study the synchrotron X-ray has been used to visualize the air bubbles in the flow field inside of the printhead undergoing the standard jetting with the firing frequency of 1–20 kHz. An air pocket of bubble was formed repeatedly and reproduced well through the tested printheads at a certain jetting condition. To see the effects of the bubbles on the dynamic characteristics of the piezoelectric printheads, the piezoelectric velocity on the top of the pressure chamber was measured with a laser vibrometer. When the bubble was trapped at the nozzle exit orifice, the piezo velocity signals showed significantly different frequency peaks appearing in the spectrum and the high frequency components were identified with the frequency response measurements.     

Modeling and characterization of an industrial inkjet head for micro-patterning on printed circuit boards

A conceptual design using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) fabrication has been performed to develop an industrial inkjet head for micro-patterning on printed circuit boards. The printhead has been fabricated with silicon and silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers by MEMS process and silicon to silicon bonding method. The measured displacement waveform from a piezoelectric actuator by laser doppler vibrometer (LDV) was used as input data for the three-dimensional flow solver to simulate the droplet formation. The mechanism of droplet ejection from piezoelectric-type inkjet heads was investigated by simulating two-phase flows of the air and metal inks. As a preliminary approach, liquid metal jetting phenomena are identified by simulating droplet ejection and droplet formation in a consequent manner. Parametric studies are followed by the design optimization process to deduce key factors to inkjet head performance: nozzle geometry, droplet size, ejecting speed, pulse amplitude, and ink viscosity. The present design tool, based on a two-phase flow solver and experimental measurements, has shown its promising applicability to various concept designs of industrial inkjet system for micro-patterning on electronic chips and boards.     

High-resolution long-array thermal ink jet printhead fabricated by anisotropic wet etching and deep Si RIE

This paper describes the fabrication and characterization of a thermal ink jet (TIJ) printhead suitable for high speed and high-quality printing. The printhead has been fabricated by dicing the bonded wafer, which consists of a bubble generating heater plate and a Si channel plate. The Si channel plate consists of an ink chamber and an ink inlet formed by KOH etching, and a nozzle formed by inductively couple plasma reactive ion etching (ICP RIE). The nozzle formed by RIE has squeezed structures, which contribute to high-energy efficiency of drop ejector and, therefore, successful ejection of small ink drop. The nozzle also has a dome-like structure called channel pit, which contributes to high jetting frequency and high-energy efficiency. These two wafers are directly bonded using electrostatic bonding of full-cured polyimide to Si. The adhesive-less bonding provided an ideal shaped small nozzle orifice. Use of the same material (Si substrate) in heater plate and channel plate enables the fabrication of high precision long printhead because no displacement and delamination occur, which are caused by the difference in thermal expansion coefficient between the plates. With these technologies, we have fabricated a 1" long printhead with 832 nozzles having 800 dots per inch (dpi) resolution and a 4 pl. ink drop volume.     

Waveform Design Methods for Piezo Inkjet Dispensers Based on Measured Meniscus Motion

Waveform design methods for piezo inkjet dispensers based on measured meniscus motion are presented. The meniscus motion is measured from charge-coupled-device camera images wherein strobe lights from light-emitting diodes are synchronized with the jetting signal. Waveforms for the piezo dispenser are designed such that the number of experiments can be significantly reduced compared to conventional methods. Furthermore, the designed waveform can also be evaluated by the measured meniscus motion since the motion is directly related to jetting behavior.     

Investigation to minimize heater burnout in thermal thin film print heads

A test system to improve the reliability of a printhead was developed and various printheads was tested. We developed a thermally driven monolithic inkjet printhead comprising dome-shaped ink chambers, thin film nozzle guides and omega-shaped heaters integrated on the top surface of each chamber. In a durability test of an inkjet printhead, the test system automatically detects a heater failure using a Wheatstone bridge circuit. Various models were designed and tested to develop a more reliable printhead. Three design parameters of the thickness of heat-transmission layer, reinforcement layer, and insulation layer were investigated in the test. Specially, the reinforcement layer was introduced to improve the lifetime of printhead. The thicker the heat-transmission layer as well as the insulation layer, the longer the life of the printhead. The lifetime of a heater with a reinforcement layer was longer than the lifetime of a heater without a reinforcement layer.     

FEM analysis of multilayered MEMS device under thermal and residual stress

It is essential to ensure reliability to produce a Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems(MEMS) on commercial scale. Reliability problem in inkjet printhead, one of MEMS, is also very important. To eject an ink drop, temperature of heater must be high so that ink contacting with surface reaches above 280° C on the instant. Its heater is embedded in the thin multi-layer in which several materials are deposited. MEMS processes are the main sources of residual stresses development. Residual stress is one of the factors reducing the reliability of MEMS devices. We measure residual stresses of single layers that consist of multilayer. FE analysis is performed using design of experiment. Transient analysis for heat transfer is performed to get a temperature distribution. And then static analysis is performed with the temperature distribution obtained by heat transfer analysis and the measured residual stresses to get a stress distribution in the structure. Although the residual stress is bigger than thermal stress, thermal stress is more influential on fatigue life.     

Suitable properties of ink to create inkjet-printed surface-directed microchannels that utilize the pinning effect of a triple line on a rough surface

If microfluidic devices can be directly produced using printing techniques, the combination of microfluidics and printing techniques for other applications, such as printed electronics, will make all-printed highly-functionalized microfluidic devices possible. Therefore, we have made efforts to develop a technique for producing microfluidic devices using an inkjet printer. The microchannels that could be created using this technique were a kind of surface-directed channels that utilize the pinning effect of a triple line on a rough surface. In this study, we focused on what were the required properties of the printer ink during the wetting and drying processes of the ink. As a result, one of the properties required during the wetting process was that the advancing contact angle of the ink should be smaller than a certain value, which depended on the average volume of the ink drops ejected from the printhead and the number of drops per unit area. The receding contact angle should be smaller than about one third of each advancing angle. In addition, during the drying process, a small amount of surfactant added to the ink played a critical role in order to leave a continuous stain of the ink. As an application of this inkjet-printed channel, we also created a device for mixing aqueous solutions.     

Fluid dynamic behavior of dispensing small droplets through a thin liquid film

This paper presents a technology for dispensing droplets through thin liquid layers. The system consists of a free liquid film, which is suspended in a frame and positioned in front of a piezoelectric printhead. A droplet, generated by the printhead, merges with the film, but due to its momentum, passes through and forms a droplet that separates on the other side and continues its flight. The technology allows the dispensing, mixing and ejecting of picolitre liquid samples in a single step. This paper overviews the concept, potential applications, experiments, results and a numerical model. The experimental work includes studying the flight of ink droplets, which ejected from an inkjet print head, fly through a free ink film, suspended in a frame and positioned in front of the printhead. We experimentally observed that the minimum velocity required for the 80 pl droplets to fly through the 75 ± 24 μm thick ink film was of 6.6 m s^?1. We also present a numerical simulation of the passage of liquid droplets through a liquid film. The numerical results for different initial speeds of droplets and their shapes are taken into account. We observed that during the droplet–film interaction, the surface energy is partially converted to kinetic energy, and this, together with the impact time, helps the droplets penetrate the film. The model includes the Navier–Stokes equations with continuum-surface-tension force derived from the phase-field/Cahn–Hilliard equation. This system allows us to simulate the motion of a free surface in the presence of surface tension during merging, mixing and ejection of droplets. The influence of dispensing conditions was studied and it was found that the residual velocity of droplets after their passage through the thin liquid film well matches the measured velocity from the experiment.     

A thermal inkjet printhead with a monolithically fabricated nozzleplate and self-aligned ink feed hole

A monolithic thermal inkjet printhead has been developed and demonstrated to operate successfully by combining monolithic growing of a nozzle plate on the silicon substrate and electrochemical etching of silicon for an ink feed hole. For the monolithic fabrication, a multiexposure and single development (MESD) technique and Ni electroplating are used to form cavities, orifices, and the nozzle plate. Electrochemical etching, as a back-end process, is applied to form an ink feed hole through the substrate, which is accurately aligned with the frontside pattern without any backside mask. The etch rate is nearly proportional to the current density up to 50 μm/min. Experiments with a 50-μm-diameter nozzle show ink ejection up to the operating frequency of 11 kHz with an average ink dot diameter of about 110 μm for 0.3-A, 5-μs current pulses     

Experimental-based feedforward control for a DoD inkjet printhead

Markets demand continuously for higher quality, higher speed, and more energy-efficient professional printers. Drop-on-Demand (DoD) inkjet printing is considered as one of the most promising printing technologies. It offers many advantages including high speed, quiet operation, and compatibility with a variety of printing media. Nowadays, it has been used as low-cost and efficient manufacturing technology in a wide variety of markets. Although the performance requirements, which are imposed by the current applications, are tight, the future performance requirements are expected to be even more challenging. These print requirements are related to the jetted drop properties, namely, drop velocity, drop volume, drop velocity consistency, productivity, and reliability. Meeting these performance requirements is restricted by several operational issues that are associated with the design and the operation of inkjet printheads. Major issues that are usually encountered are residual vibrations and crosstalk among ink channels. These result in a poor printing quality for high-speed printing. The main objective is to design a feedforward control strategy such that variations in the velocity and volume of the jetted drops are minimized. In this article, an experimental-based feedforward control scheme is proposed to improve the performance of a professional inkjet printer.     

Experimental study on high viscosity fluid micro-droplet jetting system

Fluid dispensing is a method by which fluid materials(such as epoxy,adhesive,and encapsulant) are delivered in a controlled manner in electronics packaging.Fluid jetting,derived from inkjet technology,is a noncontact,data-driven fluid dispensing technology.But ideal fluid materials for packaging are usually high viscous,which is difficult to realize by traditional inkjet technology.In this paper,a mechanical micro-droplet jetting system for high viscosity fluid was proposed.It consists of dispensing valve,m...     

Fabricating chambers of inkjet printhead by bonding SU-8 nozzle plate with suitable crosslinked degree

Microsystem Technologies - The process of fabricating chambers is becoming increasingly important for inkjet printhead. However, the majority of present fabrication methods suffer from some...     

Fast patterning microstructures using inkjet printing conformal masks

The presented paper describes a novel process using inkjet printing to pattern a conformal (built-on) mask onto photoresist for further microstructure formation. The advantages of using the inkjet printing conformal mask include no Cr photomask required, suitable for non-planar substrate, scalable for large area, and extreme low cost. The ink is ejected from the inkjet print-head controlled by the inkjet system. A CAD pattern from the designer can use this process to place the pattern ink onto the photoresist substrate. A conformal mask (made of ink) was directly built-on the photoresist substrate. The dried ink thickness has to be more than 1.8 μm thick as UV absorber. Following UV exposure, development, and ink removal, the designed microstructure patterns can be realized in photoresist such as microchannels and micro-columns.     

LED packaging by ink‐jet microdeposition of high‐viscosity resin and phosphor dispersion

Abstract— An ink‐jet‐printing method applied to the microdeposition of high‐viscosity resin, including optimization of phosphor dispersion for light‐emitting‐diode (LED) packaging was examined for the first time. An ultrasonic ink‐jet‐printing method was used, in which ink droplets are ejected by a focused ultrasonic beam from a nozzle‐less printhead. To fabricate white LEDs, high‐viscosity phosphor‐dispersed resin was deposited to form an encapsulant dome. Two types of methods to control phosphor sedimentation for color uniformity were examined; one is heating the lead frame during the resin deposition, and the other is hydrophobic surface treatment of the lead frame base enabling the fabrication of a small encapsulant dome. For light direction control, a silicone micro lens was deposited on an encapsulant dome using the ink‐jet method. The results show that ultrasonic ink‐jet printing is an applicable technique to optimize and modify on‐demand optical characteristics of LED devices.     

Fabrication of chamber for piezo inkjet printhead by SU-8 photolithography technology and bonding method

The chamber is an important part of the inkjet printhead. However, the present fabrication methods of chamber suffer from a low alignment resolution between nozzle plates and piezoelectric structure and residual SU-8 removing problems during chamber fabricating process. In this paper, a SU-8 chamber was fabricated by using ultraviolet (UV) photolithography and SU-8 thermal bonding method. By this method, the infilling problem of the chamber during thermal bonding process was solved, and low alignment resolution problem of conventional UV exposure system during assembly process was avoided. The thickness of the SU-8 nozzle plate was optimized, and the influence of bonding parameters on the deformation of chamber was analyzed. The simulation results show that the optimal thickness of the SU-8 nozzle plate is 40 μm and the optimal bonding parameters are bonding temperature of 50 °C, bonding pressure of 160 kPa and bonding time of 6 min. The tensile test results show the bonding strength of the SU-8 chamber is 2.1 MPa by using the optimized bonding parameter.     

A restructured artificial bee colony optimizer combining life-cycle,local search and crossover operations for droplet property prediction in printable electronics fabrication

For printable electronics fabrication, a major challenge is the print resolution and accuracy delivered by a drop-on-demand piezoelectric inkjet printhead. In order to meet the challenging requirements of printable electronics fabrication, this paper proposes a novel restructured artificial bee colony optimizer called HABC for optimal prediction of the droplet volume and velocity. The main idea of HABC is to develop an adaptive and cooperative scheme by combining life-cycle, Powell’s search and crossover-based social learning strategies for complex optimizations. HABC is a more biologically-realistic model that the reproduce and die dynamically throughout the foraging process and the population size varies as the algorithm runs. With the crossover operator, the information exchange ability of the bees can be enhanced in the early exploration phase while the Powell’s search enables the bees deeply exploit around the promising area, which provides an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation. The proposed algorithm is benchmarked against other four state-of-the-art bio-inspired algorithms using both classical and CEC2005 test function suites. Then HABC is applied to predict the printing quality using nano-silver ink. Statistical analysis of all these tests highlights the significant performance improvement due to the beneficial combination and shows that the proposed HABC outperforms the reference algorithms.     

Effect of seed layer stress on the fabrication of monolithic MEMS microstructure

This paper reported the effect of seed layer stress on the fabrication of monolithic polymer-metal MEMS microstructure and what is a better material for the seed layer. The monolithic microstructure is gaining more and more attentions in MEMS application, especially in three-dimensional microstructure and inkjet printhead. The polymer–metal MEMS microstructure can be fabricated by combining the lithography and electroforming technologies. It is an integrated technology by batch process at low cost. The metal seed layer with large stress will lead to cracks and failure during the process integration. Several metal materials and thicknesses were studied to find a better candidate as the seed layer for the monolithic MEMS microstructure. The relationship between the monolithic MEMS structure and seed layer selection is also discussed. The lower residual stress of seed layer will result in a better surface condition for the followed integration process. The pure Ti metal and two-layer Ti/Au composite are the better seed layer materials in this study for the followed electroforming process of the monolithic polymer-metal MEMS microstructure.     

The flow structure inside a microfabricated inkjet printhead

A micrometer resolution particle image velocimetry system has been adapted to measure instantaneous velocity fields in an inkjet printhead. The technique uses 700-nm-diameter fluorescent flow tracing particles, a pulsed Nd:YAG laser, an epi-fluorescent microscope, and a cooled interline transfer charge-coupled device camera to record images of flow tracing particles at two known instances in time. Instantaneous velocity vector fields are obtained with spatial resolutions of 5-10 μm and temporal resolutions of 2-5 μs. The relationship between instantaneous velocity fields is compared to instantaneous shapes of the meniscus. The flow in the nozzle is highly unsteady and characterized by a maximum velocity of 8 ms^-1, Reynolds numbers of Re=500, and accelerations of up to 70 000 times gravity (i.e., 70 000 g). Since the flow field is periodic for each ejection cycle, the instantaneous measurements can be phased averaged to determine the evolution of the average flow field. The ejection cycle period is 500 μs, and consists of four primary phases: infusion, inversion, ejection, and relaxation. During infusion, the actuator plate is deflected downward creating a low pressure that draws fluid into the inkjet cavity through the orifice and pulls the meniscus into the cavity through the nozzle. The meniscus grows, begins to decrease in size, and then deforms in shape, becoming inverted for approximately 6 μs. The meniscus exits the cavity through the nozzle during droplet ejection. During relaxation, the flow undergoes viscously-damped oscillations, and reaches equilibrium before the next ejection cycle begins     

Toward high‐resolution,inkjet‐printed,quantum dot light‐emitting diodes for next‐generation displays

We have investigated the possibility of fabricating quantum dot light‐emitting diodes (QLEDs) using inkjet printing technology, which is the most attractive method for the full‐color patterning of QLED displays. By controlling the quantum dot (QD) ink formulation and inkjet printing condition, we successfully patterned QLED pixels in the 60‐in ultrahigh definition TV format, which has a resolution of 73 pixels per inch. The inkjet‐printed QLEDs exhibited a maximum luminance of 2500 cd/m². Although the performance of inkjet‐printed QLEDs is low compared with that of QLEDs fabricated using the spin‐coating process, our results clearly indicate that the inkjet printing technology is suitable for patterning QD emissive layers to realize high‐resolution, full‐color QLED displays.