Nozzle Wetting Dynamics on Inkjet Printhead and its Impact on Jetting

摘要

As the drop formation from the inkjet nozzle strongly depends on the meniscus shape and position, how inks wet around and inside the nozzle is crucial for inkjet printing. The wetting dynamics can affect drop velocity/volume, straightness, and jetting robustness. This effect becomes more significant at high jetting frequencies because the meniscus has no time to recover between ejections. In document printing, it is possible to engineer inks to mitigate wetting induced problems and optimize the jetting performance. As the inkjet technology expands to digital fabrication, the wetting is not an ink engineering problem any more since one printhead must jet tens of different inks. This work can help to better understand the nozzle wetting dynamics and can provide valuable insight for selection of anti-wetting material and coating process for better jetting performance.