Novel Micro Piezo Technology for Ink Jet Printhead

摘要

Micro Piezo technology is offering superior features in ink ejection performance, compatibility with a wide variety of inks, and durability. As a result, this technology has already being utilized effectively in various commercial and industrial fields such as photo lab printing, digital printing, textile printing, and color filter manufacturing. However, new printheads that have a larger number of nozzles and higher performance are constantly required to improve printing speed or productivity, both for commercial products and industrial applications. We have succeeded to develop a next-generation Micro Piezo printhead, which has 360 nozzles-per-inch and piezo elements of I micrometer of thickness. In spite of the nozzle density doubled, this printhead retains all the advantages of the current Micro Piezo printheads, including the ability to produce variable sized droplets and the capability to eject ink droplets at high frequency. The installation of next-generation Micro Piezo printheads in printers and other devices will make it possible to design speedier and more compact Inkjet equipments than ever before. In this paper, the key to improve the printhead performance and increasing nozzle density is studied. Then, the structure and characteristics of the next-generation Micro Piezo printhead are described.