Rheological Behaviour of Ceramic Inks for Direct Ceramic Inkjet Printing

Abstract

In this paper, studies were made on the preparation of ceramic inks with: (i) alumina powderin ethyl alcohol and (ii) zirconia powder in ethyl alcohol at different volume fractions of ceramic.Different amounts (0.75-3.00 vol %) of an organic dispersant (oleic acid) were added to ceramicink containing 5 per cent of ceramic by volume in ethyl alcohol. The viscosities of the suspensionswere determined with Brookefield viscometer (model: DV-E), which is suitable for measuringthe viscosities of suspensions accurately. These inks were deposited on a substrate to see theirspread. The sediment packing densities ( m) of the resulting suspensions were calculated usingtheoretical models which can be related to the density that can be achieved in the final product.The highest sediment packing density was arrived at low viscosity values of the ink and occurredwhen 1 per cent of dispersant by volume was used for 5 per cent alumina content. For 5 percent zirconia content, 2 per cent of dispersant by volume gave a similar result. Experimentswere also conducted to find the value of m for different solid loadings (5-25 vol %) of ceramicwith 1 per cent dispersant. It was observed that the sediment packing density and the apparentviscosities were increasing when solid loading concentrations were increased for both aluminaand zirconia-based inks. The optimum value of m and viscosity have been determined from thisstudy. The results of this preliminary study will be useful for further investigations on therheological behaviour of ceramic inks for direct ceramic inkjet printing