Modeling and optimizing industrial inkjet printhead for printable electronics fabrication

Abstract

The most significant issues in printable electronics fabrication are the printing quality and efficiency delivered by drop-on-demand (DOD) industrial inkjet printhead. Aiming to characterize the nonlinear behaviors of piezoelectric inkjet printhead, the dynamic lumped element model (DLEM) is proposed to cast the original LEM into a time-varying and nonlinear fashion. At the same time , the PSO-based optimization for paramenters is incorporated in DLEM. Due to new characteristics, DLEM can accurately simulate the inkjet-printed nanosilver droplet formation process and effectively predicate optimal combinations of high-frequency driving waveform with high printing quality. From extensive experimental studies, the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed DLEM is validated