• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
• /
• v.30 no.11 s.254
• /
• pp.1107-1116
• /
• 2006

The droplet ejection process driven by an evaporating bubble in a thermal inkjet printhead is investigated by numerically solving the conservation equations for mass, momentum and energy. The phase interfaces are tracked by a level set method which is modified to include the effect of phase change at the interface and extended for multiphase flows with irregular solid boundaries. The compressibility effect of a bubble is also included in the analysis to appropriately describe the bubble expansion behaviour associated with the high pressure caused by bubble nucleation. The whole process of bubble growth and collapse as well as droplet ejection during thermal inkjet printing is simulated without employing a simplified semi-empirical bubble growth model. Based on the numerical results, the jet breaking and droplet formation behaviour is observed to depend strongly on the bubble growth and collapse pattern. Also, the effects of liquid viscosity, surface tension and nozzle geometry are quantified from the calculated bubble growth rate and ink droplet ejection distance.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2005.11a
• /
• pp.67.2-67.2
• /
• 2005

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2011.05a
• /
• pp.3.2-3.2
• /
• 2011

In recent years, inkjet printing technology has received significant attention as a micro/nanofabrication technique for flexible printing of electronic circuits and solar cells, as well for biomaterial patterning. It eliminates the need for physical masks, causes fewer environment problems, lowers fabrication costs, and offers good layer-to-layer registration. To fulfill the requirements for use in the above applications, however, the inkjet system must meet certain criteria such as high frequency jetting, uniform droplet size, high density nozzle array, etc. Existing inkjet devices are either based on thermal bubbles or piezoelectric pumping; they have several drawbacks for flexible printing. For instance, thermal bubble jetting has limitations in terms of size and density of the nozzle array as well as the ejection frequency. Piezoelectric based devices suffer from poor pumping energy in addition to inadequate ejection frequency. Recently, an electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing technique has been suggested and proposed as an alternative to thermal bubble or piezoelectric devices. In EHD jetting, a liquid (ink) is pumped through a nozzle and a strong electric field is applied between the nozzle and an extractor plate, which induce charges at the surfaces of the liquid meniscus. This electric field creates an electric stress that stretches the meniscus in the direction of the electric field. Once the electric field force is larger than the surface tension force, a liquid droplet is formed. An EHD inkjet head can produce droplets smaller than the size of the nozzle that produce them. Furthermore, the EHD nano-inkjet can eject high viscosity liquid through the nozzle forming tiny structures. These unique features distinguish EHD printing from conventional methods for sub-micron resolution printing. In this presentation, I will introduce the recent research results regarding the EHD nano-inkjet and the printing system, which has been applied to solar cell or thin film transistor applications.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
• /
• 2007.05a
• /
• pp.366-372
• /
• 2007

Self-sensing measurement of piezo inkjet and its application are discussed. The pressure wave inside the inkjet dispenser was measured by current measurement due to self-sensing capability of PZT. The pressure wave measured from current was verified by commercially available laser vibrometer. Here, two applications using self-sensing signal were discussed: waveform design for high speed jetting and condition monitoring. For waveform design, two pulse waveform was designed based on self-sensing signal such that the pressure wave after droplet formation can be minimized. For condition monitoring, self-sensing signal was shown to be effective in detecting air bubble trapped in inkjet printhead.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2007.05a
• /
• pp.455-460
• /
• 2007

A self-sensing circuit for piezo inkjet has been designed in order to monitor the operating condition during printing. In order to verify the circuit, both ink droplet images from strobe LED and vibration signals from the laser vibrometer were measured and compared with self-sensing signal. Experimental results show that self-sensing signal was effective in detecting the pressure wave change due to the bubble trapped in inkjet printhead.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2006.08a
• /
• pp.655-659
• /
• 2006

This paper presents a novel electrostatic drop-on-demand inkjet device featured by a MEMS fabricated pole-type and hole-type nozzle with tube shaped orifice and investigates the feasibility of applying the inkjet device to display fabrication process. The electric voltage signal applied to the ring shaped upper electrode plate, against the hole-shaped ground or pole-shaped ground, referred here pole-type and hole-type nozzle respectively, allows ejection of small droplet to take place: That is, a tiny droplet is taken away from the peak of the mountain shaped liquid meniscus formed at the nozzle orifice. It is verified experimentally that the use of the pole type nozzle allows a stable and sustainable micro-dripping mode of droplet ejection for a wider range of applied voltages and of liquid viscosities. This demonstrates a feasibility of electrostatic drop-on-demand inkjet device as a disruptive alternative to conventional print heads such as thermal bubble or piezoelectric inkjet heads.

• 한국가시화정보학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2007.11a
• /
• pp.128-133
• /
• 2007

An electrostatic inkjet head can be used for manufacturing processes of large display systems and printed circuit boards (PCB) as well as inkjet printers because an electrostatic field provides an external force which can be manipulated to control sizes of droplets. The existing printing methods such as thermal bubble and piezo inkjet heads have shown difficulties to control the ejection of the droplets for printing applications. Thus, the new inkjet head has been proposed using the electrostatic force. A numerical analysis has been performed to calculate the intensity of the electrostatic field using the Maxwell's equation. Also, experiments have been carried out to investigate the droplet movement using a downward capillary with outside diameter of $500{\mu}m$. Gravity, surface tension, and electrostatic force have been analyzed with high voltages for a drop-on-demand ejection. It has been observed that the droplet size decreases and the frequency of the droplet formation and the velocity of the droplet ejection increase with increasing the intensity of the electrostatic field using high-speed camera.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2006.08a
• /
• pp.505-508
• /
• 2006

An electrostatic ink jet head can be used for manufacturing processes of large display systems and printed circuit boards (PCB) as well as inkjet printers because an electrostatic field provides an external force which can be manipulated to control sizes of droplets. The existing printing methods such as thermal bubble and piezo inkjet heads have shown difficulties to control the ejection of the droplets for printing applications. Thus, the new inkjet head using the electrostatic force has been proposed in this study. In order to prove the theory of the developed electrostatic ink jet head, the applicable and basic theory has been studied using distilled water and water with sodium dodecyl surfate (SDS). Also, a numerical analysis has been performed to calculate the intensity of the electrostatic field using the Maxwell's equation. Furthermore, experiments have been carried out using a downward glass capillary with outside diameter of $500{\mu}m$. The gravity, surface tension, and electrostatic force have been analyzed with high voltages of 0 to 5kV. It has been observed that the droplet size decreases and the frequency of the droplet formation and the velocity of the droplet ejection increase with increasing the intensity of the electrostatic field. The results of the experiments have shown good agreement with those of numerical analysis.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2008.11a
• /
• pp.1103-1106
• /
• 2008

For the current display process, the innovative micro pattern fabrication process using semiconductor process should be developed, which requires the expensive equipment, the limited process environment and the expensive optic-sensitive material. The effort of process innovation during past several years ends up the limit of cost reduction. The existing ink jet technologies such as a thermal bubble ink jet printing and a piezo ink jet printing are required to shorten the nozzle diameter in order to apply to the micro pattern fabrication. In this paper, as one way to cope these problems the micro pattern equipment based on the electrostatic ink jet has been developed and carried out some experiments.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
• /
• v.29 no.1 s.232
• /
• pp.67-73
• /
• 2005

The paper presents a single-heater microfluid injector, whose ejected droplet volume is adjusted by digital current path control for a single microheater. The previous droplet volume adjustable methods have used the digital current control for multiple heaters or the analog current control for a single heater, while the present method uses the digital current control for a single microheater. Two different microinjectors, having a rectangular heater and a circular hearter, are designed and fabricated in the chip area of $7.64\;mm{\times}5.26\;mm$. The fabricated microinjectors have been tested and characterized for the number, size, shape and lifetime of the generated bubbles as well as for the volume and velocity of the ejected droplets. The input power for the rectangular heater and the circular heater has been varied in the ranges of $8.7{\sim}24.9{\mu}W\;and\;8.1{\sim}43.8{\mu}W$, respectively. The projected area of the generated bubble has been changed in the ranges of $440{\sim}l,3600{\mu}m^2\;and\;800{\sim}3,300{\mu}m^2$ for the rectangular heater and the circular heater, respectively. The microinjector with the rectangular heater ejects three discrete levels of the droplet in the volume range of $9.4{\sim}20.7pl$ with the velocity range of $0.8{\sim}1.7m/s$, while the microinjector with the circular heater achieves five discrete levels of the droplet in the volume range of $7.4{\sim}27.4pl$ with the velocity range of $0.5{\sim}2.8m/s$.