Scrona Ag

Eth Zurich

Patrick Galliker

Dimos Poulikakos

Julian Schneider

Martin Schmid

An inkjet printing system includes a print head with a plurality of ink nozzles arranged in recesses on the print head. Gas from a first gas source is conveyed through first gas ducts and fed to the recesses. An evaporator is arranged along the first gas ducts before the nozzles, saturating the gas with solvent, which prevents undesired evaporation of ink at the ink nozzles. The printing system further includes second gas ducts feeding dry gas to the region between the print head and the target as well as third gas ducts for carrying off gas from the first and second air ducts.

Inkjet printing system with nozzle evaporator

An electrohydrodynamic inkjet printing system includes a print head with a plurality of ink nozzles arranged in recesses on the print head. A plurality of ejection electrodes located at the ink nozzles. A support structure is arranged in front of the ink nozzles and forming a front surface, wherein the ejection electrodes are arranged on the support structure. Gas from a first gas source and/or from a second gas source is conveyed through gas ducts and or gas is fed through the gas ducts to a gas sink. The gas ducts extend, over at least part of their length, along the support structure.

The electrohydrodynamic print head includes a nozzle layer with a plurality of nozzles. A feed layer is arranged above nozzle layer. It contains feed ducts for feeding ink to the nozzles as well as electrically conducting feed lines for feeding voltages to electrodes at nozzles. The feed layer includes one or more dielectric sublayers, which is/are structured to form the feed ducts and feed lines. Some of the sublayers contain vertical via sections and others contain horizontal interconnect sections. The feed layer is structured for customizing the print head easily.

Electrohydrodynamic print head with structured feed layer

An electrohydrodynamic print head has a plurality of nozzles arranged in a plurality of wells. Extraction electrodes are located around the wells at a level below the nozzles. Further, shielding electrodes are located around the wells at a level below the extraction electrodes. For each well, there are several such shielding electrodes located at different angular positions. This allows to use the shielding electrodes for laterally deflecting the ink after its ejection from the nozzles.

Electrodynamic print head with split shielding electrodes for lateral ink deflection

A touch sensor has a first and a second set of tracks arranged on a substrate. The tracks have a small width of less than 10 micrometers that renders them invisible to the naked eye. At the same time, neighboring parallel tracks are located at less than 200 micrometers from each other for macroscopic uniformity. The two sets of tracks may include interrupted tracks to reduce mutual capacitance and to increase sensitivity. The tracks can be meandering for optical anisotropy. The touch sensor can be manufactured using electrohydrodynamic ejection printing.

Optically transparent conductor assembly with electrical tracks and touch sensor comprising the same

The print head includes a nozzle layer with a plurality of nozzles for printing ink onto a target. It further includes ventilation openings including blow openings for feeding a gas to the region between the nozzles and the target as well as suction openings for feeding gas away from this region. This allows maintaining a desired atmosphere at the region in order to better control the printing process.

Ventilated print head

The electrohydrodynamic print head comprises a plurality of nozzles. Each nozzle has a central nozzle duct laterally surrounded by a nozzle wall. The top end of the nozzle duct communicates with an ink feed duct. An annular trench laterally surrounds the nozzle. An extraction electrode is located around the axis of the nozzle at a level below it, and a shaping electrode located laterally outside the nozzle duct. The shaping electrode is arranged within a ring having a horizontal width of less than the vertical distance between said shaping electrode and the extraction electrode or it is located above the trench. Both these measures allow to operate the device with high voltages with reduced risk of electrical breakdown.

Electrohydrodynamic print head with shaping electrodes and extraction electrodes

A method of printing a print pattern onto a substrate with a print head comprises a plurality of nozzles, where the print head has a rectangular active print head area which includes all of the nozzles. The active print head area is delimited by four sides defining a primary and a secondary direction. The method comprises i) decomposing the print pattern into a plurality of print pattern segments that have dimensions along the primary and secondary direction which are smaller than the dimensions of the active print head area along the primary and secondary direction; ii) assigning each print pattern segment to exactly one nozzle; iii) causing each nozzle to print the print pattern segment assigned to said nozzle. The print head is moved during printing of each print pattern segment within an area that is smaller than said active print head area.

Print pattern generation on a substrate

A print head () for depositing a liquid on a substrate comprises a layer structure including a stop layer () made of a dielectric material, an electrically conducting device layer (), and an insulator layer () made of a dielectric material. A nozzle () is formed in the layer structure. The nozzle has a nozzle opening () for ejecting the liquid. A ring trench () is formed around the nozzle. The nozzle opening and the ring trench are radially separated by an annular nozzle wall (). An ejection channel () is formed adjacent to the ring trench along the direction of ejection. An extraction electrode () is arranged on the insulator layer () and surrounds the nozzle.

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Horgen, Switzerland

Patrick Galliker