Electrohydrodynamic jet printing: advancements in manufacturing applications

Electrohydrodynamic jet printing offers advantages such as high resolution over more traditional manufacturing printing techniques, but lacks in the high throughput that is demanded by industry. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UIUC, a high resolution technique for printing was developed and also a desktop system designed and built. UIUC has been researching the advancements of E-jet in manufacturing applications for many years. This thesis includes work which continues to push the abilities of the current E-jet system to be more appealing for manufacturing along with developing a new printing technique utilizing the fundamental physics of E-jet printing. A multi-nozzle array (MNA) print head is proposed which has the capability of addressing each nozzle individually or simultaneously print with the whole array. For proof of concept, a four nozzle print head is discussed and has the potential to be increased for batch pattern/image printing. By powering the nozzles with a pulse width DC voltage, the printed image quality can be controlled depending on the desired application and is also studied. The standard deviation of the achieved droplet size across the multi-nozzle print head is approximately 0.5-0.6µm. A simple cost analysis was performed to determine feasibility of a one-time use nozzle print head. Finally, preliminary efforts of printing from an ink film by means of a generated rather than applied voltage is developed, tested, and discussed in this thesis. This work eliminates the need for a physical nozzle that is used in nearly all current E-jet printing setups. By implanting pyroelectricity to E-jet, droplet diameters as small as 300µm were printed. Although these droplets are large compared to current E-jet printing, the work discussed is a proof of concept and by further understanding the physics of pyroelectricity, it is hoped that a comparable resolution of droplet size can be achieved.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Takagi, Miki

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ferreira, Placid M.

• Electrohydrodynamic
• Electrohydrodynamic-jet (E-jet)
• multi-nozzle array (MNA)
• pyroelectricity
• ink film printing
• nozzle-less

Statement dc:rights

• 2013 Miki F. Takagi

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/44447

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/44447