Electrostatic head with toner attracting plates

Abstract

An electrostatic imaging system is disclosed having an imaging head characterized by a plurality of discretely chargeable areas. The charge on each discrete area is controlled by a separate binary circuit. The imaging head is preferably a monocrystalline semiconductor substrate with the discretely chargeable areas being either metallized plates or regions of one conductivity type that are individually isolated by regions of the other conductivity type. The binary circuit associated with each chargeable area is formed in the semiconductor substrate using conventional integrated circuit technology. One embodiment of the imaging head is used in an electrostatic line printer programmed by the output from a digital system to produce matrix type characters. Another embodiment of the imaging head may also be used in an electrostatic half tone facsimile system. Still another embodiment of the imaging head is used in electrostatic systems for producing high quality characters in high or low speed electrostatic systems which are geometrically programmed using light coupling, capacitive coupling, or resistive coupling to the imaging head. The imaging heads may also be used in temporary display systems in which visible particles are attracted to selectively activated, separated by chargeable areas each controlled by a programmable bistable circuit.