• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.141-145
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• 2009

Recently, inkjet technology has emerged as one of the most powerful tools for patterning electronics devices, such as large area display applications, RFID, PCB patterning, etc. By using the Inkjet technology, the droplet speed as well as the size can be controlled precisely. In this paper, the relationship between waveform and droplet size will be investigated by means of experiment. Also the relationship between inkjet speed and droplet size will be discussed. It was shown from experimental results that ink droplet size from the nozzle diameter of $50{\mu}m$ can be varied from 37 to $58{\mu}m$ by modifying the inkjet waveform when the speed of the droplet is 1m/sec. Finally, experimental results indicate that small drops are more difficult to generate than large drops since the jetting conditions for making small drops are sensitively affected by the dwell time variation.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2007.05b
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• pp.2563-2566
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• 2007

TFT LCD industries have endeavored to adopt the piezo Drop-On-Demand (DOD) inkjet printing technology to production lines of TFT LCD color filters and these efforts have significantly been based on experimental works. Because the degree of complexity in the piezo DOD inkjet printing technology results in too many combination of parameters, the matrix experimental method to investigate all possible sets of parameters becomes ineffective and hence the basic understanding of the piezo Drop-On-Demand inkjet print technology becomes important. In this study, one possible cause of the droplet volume variation across nozzles, which might cause visible swathe marks on an inkjet patterned TFT LCD color filter, is theoretically investiaged and new R&D directions are suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.101-107
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• 2007

Jettability analysis using one-dimensional(1D) lumped parameter model has been investigated to design the industrial inkjet head with proper drop velocity and drop volume. By simplifying the inkjet head system into an equivalent electrical circuit, lumped model has been developed. Performance of the lumped model is verified by the comparison between measured results of droplet velocity and ejection volume and predicted value. Also, the jetting performance of an inkjet head is characterized by varying the design parameter and driving condition. As a result, simulation results shows good agreement with the experimentally measured value. The developed lumped model enables to easily understand the effect of dimension change and predict the jetting performance.

• 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 Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.34-40
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• 2011

In this paper, a hybrid design tool combining one-dimensional(1D) lumped model and three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics(CFD) approach has been developed in order to evaluate the performance of inkjet print head and droplet control process are studied to reduce the deviations between nozzles which affect the size of the printed line for the industrial application of direct writing on printed circuit boards(PCB). 1D lumped model analysis shows that it is useful tool for evaluating performance of an inkjet head by varying the design parameters. The differences in ejected volume and droplet velocity between analytical and experimental result are within 12%. Time sequence of droplet generation is verified by the comparison between 3D analysis result and photographic images acquired by stroboscopic technique. In addition, by applying DPN process, velocity and volume uniformity between nozzles is dramatically improved that the tolerance achieved by the piezoelectric inkjet printhead across the 64 nozzles is 5 to 8%. A printed line pattern is successfully obtained using the fabricated inkjet print head and droplet calibration system.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.11a
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• pp.423-424
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• 2010

• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.113-115
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• 2003

Droplet impinging into a cavity at micro-scale is one of important fluidic issues for microfabrications, e.g. bio-chip applications and inkjet deposition processes in the PLED panel manufacturing. The droplets generally dispensing from an inkjet head, which contains an array of nozzles, have a volume in several picoliters, while each nozzle jets the droplets into cavities with micron-meter size located on substrates. Due to measurement difficulties at micro-scale, the numerical simulation could serve as an efficient and preliminary way to evaluate the micro-sized droplet impinging behavior into a cavity. The micro-fluidic flow is computed by solving the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations through a finite volume discretization. The droplet front is predicted by a volume-of-fluid approach, in which the surface tension is modeled as a function of the fluid concentration. This paper discusses the influence of fluid properties, such as surface tension and fluid viscosity, on micro-fluidic characteristics at different jetting speeds in the deposition process via the proposed numerical approach.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.10 s.253
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• pp.1003-1011
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• 2006

Droplets are ejected onto a substrate through a nozzle by pushing liquids in flow channels of drop-on-demand devices. The behavior of ejection and formation of droplets is investigated to enhance the physical understanding of the hydrodynamics involved in inkjet printing. The free surface phenomenon of a droplet is described using $CFD-ACE^{TM}$ which employs the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method with the piecewise linear interface construction (PLIC). Droplet formation characteristics are analyzed in various flow regimes with different Ohnesorge numbers. The computational results show that the droplet formations are strongly dependent on the physical properties of working fluids and the inlet flow conditions. In addition, the wetting characteristics of working fluids on a nozzle influence the volume and velocity of a droplet produced in the device. This study may provide an insight into how a liquid droplet is formed and ejected in a piezoelectric inkjet printing device.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.51-56
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• 2021

Using an inkjet printing process, we have investigated a droplet formation of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) near the orifice of a piezoelectric inkjet head. With an attempt to form the smallest droplet without any satellites, we have applied various waveforms such as the unipolar, bipolar, and M-shaped waveforms. It is found that the droplet velocity and volume vary depending sensitively on the waveform width and voltage. Of those, the M-shaped waveform is shown to provide the smallest droplet volume, followed by the bipolar and then unipolar waveforms. The droplet printed on a PET film roll by the M-shaped waveform has the diameter as small as 46.1 ㎛. It is likely that the second short unipolar in the M-shape waveform increases the droplet velocity gradient, rendering the droplet smaller.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.641-647
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• 2016

A drop-on-demand inkjet is used widely for various applications. Therefore, it is important to understand the jetting behavior of the drop from the piezo inkjet. In this study, to predict the jetting behavior, VOF (Volume-of-Fluid) simulation techniques were used and compared with the experimental results. The experimentally measured meniscus movement was used as the input data for the simulation. To verify the simulation, the measured jetting behavior of the mixture fluids of ethylene glycol and IPA (isopropyl alcohol), which has a mixing ratio of 50:50, was used. The numerical simulation of the drop formation using various mixture ratios and its comparison with the measured drop formation confirmed that the proposed method can predict the actual jetting. On the other hand, the satellite drop behavior showed slight differences because the small sized droplet is subject to a more aerodynamic effect during flight because the kinetic energy of the satellite droplet is far smaller than that of the main droplet.