A high speed electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing method for line printing

Abstract

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing has drawn attention due to its capability to produce smaller dots and patterns with finer lines when compared to those obtained from using conventional inkjet printing. Previous studies have suggested that drop-on-demand EHD-patterning applications should be limited to very slow printing cases with speeds far less than 10 mm s−1 due to the small dot size and limited jetting frequency. In this study, a new EHD printing method is proposed to significantly increase the line-patterning printing speed by modifying the ink and thereby changing the relic shape. The proposed method has the additional advantage of reducing the line-pattern width. The results of the experiment show that the pattern width could be reduced from 20 µm to 4 µm by increasing the printing speed from 10 mm s−1 to 50 mm s−1, respectively.

A Vector Printing Method for High-Speed Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) Jet Printing Based on Encoder Position Sensors

“…This shows that the droplet size is smaller in the initial part in which the printing speed is low and becomes larger in the printing direction, until it reaches the target printing speed. The droplet amount is related to the jet frequency, and it becomes larger as the jet frequency increases [6,8]. Note that in the acceleration and deceleration part, the jetting frequency should be very low to print dots at each equally spaced distance when it is compared to the target printing speed part.…”

“…Although the EHD jet can be produced by using DC voltage only, pulse voltage superposed with DC voltage has been commonly used, since the jetting can be controlled by an external trigger signal. Most previous EHD vector printing methods have been based on AC voltage, or pulse voltage with constant frequency from either external or internal trigger sources [4][5][6][7][8]. In this case, the drop placement spacing between 2 consecutive jettings, d s , can be determined by the motion (printing) speed, v, and the jetting frequency, f, as: d s = v f .…”

“…To design the pulse voltage shape for proper jetting, Mishra et al proposed a pulse width modulation method [5], whilst Kwon et al presented the use of trapezoidal pulse voltage [6]. For EHD printing, most previous works have used AC or pulse voltage with constant frequency [4][5][6][7][8]. In such cases, there will be a large amount of deposited droplets at the starting and end points, which is caused by printing speed variation.…”

High-Resolution Electric-Field-Driven Jet 3D Printing and Applications

“…Unlike the traditional macro-scale 3D printing and micro-scale 3D printing, the macro/ micro-scale 3D printing should take into account both the printing accuracy and the printing efficiency in the printing process [15,16]. To ensure the capability of integrated printing of multi-scale complex 3D structure, and to better meet the requirements of the practical engineering of 3D printing.…”

Jet Mode Recognition of Electrohydrodynamic Direct-Writing Based on Micro/Nano Current

“…With the advantages of low cost, simple process, easy integration, and good material compatibility, electrohydrodynamic direct-writing (EDW) technology has great potential in flexible electronics [1,2], biological tissue engineering [3,4] cell engineering [5,6], and other fields. Based on the electrohydrodynamic (EHD) theory, the electrostatic voltage is loaded on the nozzle tip to stretch the solution into a fine jet for the printing of micro/nano structures, including nanofibers, droplets, and bead-on-string structures [7][8][9][10], which can be operated under room temperature and normal pressure conditions [11]. By shortening the distance between the nozzle and the collector, the stable and straight jet can be used to direct-write precise micro/nano patterns [12,13].…”