• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.73-79
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• 2011

Inkjet printhead may have a lot of nozzles to increase productivity as a manufacturing tool. So, the uniformity of jetting performance among a lot of nozzles has been one of the key issues in inkjet technology In this study, we investigated the cross-talk effect which should be reduced for uniform jetting performance among a lot of nozzles. Due to the cross-talk, the jetting performance of a nozzle can be affected when neighboring nozzles are firing. For experimental study, we used commercial inkjet head SE-128 from Dimatix. To understand the cross-talk effect of SE-128 head, we measured the change in jetting speed of a nozzle when neighboring nozzles are jetting. The measured jetting speed was compared to the case of one nozzle jetting. Also, we used laser vibrometer to measure change in pressure wave due to cross-talk. As a result of the cross-talk, the jetting speed can become faster or sometimes slower depending on firing nozzle location. If the all nozzle are jetting, the jetting speed of a nozzle became slower because the pressure wave for jetting is reduced.

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

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

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2012

In this study, a piezoelectric inkjet nozzle with a rectangular shaped channel has been developed, and the characteristics of droplet formation have been investigated according to the variation of pulse widths in bipolar waveform. The channel of the nozzle was fabricated transparently by a precision machining technique. A tantalum membrane which was attached to a piezoelectric material covers the channel. By applying two types of bipolar waveforms to the piezoelectric actuators, droplet formation through the nozzle was monitored by a CCD camera. For the variety of the first and second pulse widths in the bipolar waveforms, the regimes of single and double droplet formations are presented. The change of droplet velocity which depends on the pulse width and the type of waveform is also discussed.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.121-127
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• 2008

This paper presents design and fabrication of optimized geometry structure of electrostatic inkjet head. In order to verify effect of geometry shape, we simulate electric field intensity according to the head structure. The electric field strength increases linearly with increasing height of the micro nozzle. As the nozzle diameter decreases, the electric field along the periphery of the meniscus can be more concentrated. We design and fabricate the electrostatic inkjet heads, hole type and pole type, with optimized structure. It was fabricated using thick-thermal oxidation and silicon micromachining technique such as the deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and chemical wet etching process. It is verified experimentally that the use of the MEMS inkjet head allows a stable and sustainable micro-dripping mode of droplet ejection. A stable micro dripping mode of ejection is observed under the voltages 2.5 kV and droplet diameter is $10\;{\mu}m$.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.20.2-20.2
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• 2010

Recently inkjet printing technology has been developed in the areas of low cost fabrication in environmentally friendly manufacturing processes. Although inkjet printing requires the interdisciplinary researches including development of materials, manufacturing processes and printing equipment and peripherals, manufacturing a printhead is still core of inkjet technology. In this study, a piezoelectric driven DOD (drop on demand) inkjet printhead has been fabricated on three layers of the silicon wafer in MEMS Technology because of its chemical resistance to industrial inks, strong mechanical properties and dimensional accuracy to meet the drop volume uniformity in printed electronics and display industries. The flow passage, filter and nozzles are precisely etched on the layers of the silicon wafers and assembled through silicon fusion bonding without additional adhesives. The piezoelectric is screen-printed on the top the pressure chamber and the nozzle plate surface is treated with non-wetting coating for jetting fluids. Printheads with nozzle number of 16 to 256 have been developed to get the drop volume range from 5 pL to 80 pL in various industrial applications. Currently our printheads are successfully utilized to fabricating color-filters and PI alignment layers in LCD Flat Panel Display and legend marking for PCB in Samsung Electronics.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.421-426
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• 2018

To develop a piezoelectric inkjet printhead for high-resolution and high-speed printing, we studied the characteristics of an inkjet printhead by analyzing the major design parameters. An analytical model for the inkjet printhead was established, and numerical analysis of the coupled first-order differential equation for the defined state variables was performed using state equations. To design the dimension of the inkjet printhead with a driving frequency of 100 kHz, the characteristics of the flow rate and discharge pressure of the nozzle were analyzed with respect to design variables of the flow chamber, effective sound wave velocity, driving voltage, and voltage waveform. It was predicted that the change in the height of the flow chamber does not significantly affect the Helmholtz resonance frequency and discharge speed of the nozzle. From the analysis of change in flow chamber width, it is observed that as the width of the flow chamber increases, the ejection speed greatly increases and the Helmholtz resonance frequency decreases considerably, thereby substantially affecting the performance of the inkjet printhead.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.751-752
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• 2009

• Journal of the Korean Society of Visualization
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.9-13
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• 2008

The reproducibility of water droplet formation which is indispensible in the investigation of a drop-on-demand piezoelectrically driven inkjet was verified by checking the size of droplet and distance from the nozzle tip of inkjet head to droplet. Based on the reproducibility of droplet formation, we visualized the formation of micro-scale droplets by acquiring consecutive images at the jetting frequency of 500 Hz for which air bubbles were not generated. Two different electric waveforms were used to drive the piezoelectric actuator. The visualization system consists of a high-speed camera that can capture images up to 250,000fps, a long-distance microscope and a halogen lamp as a light source.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.757-758
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• 2009