Jet Breakup Dynamics of Inkjet Printing Fluids

• Main Author: Sundara Rajan, Kashyap
• Format: Others
• Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2021
• Subjects: Inkjet Printing; Jet Breakup; Rheology
• Online Access: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/1025; https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2074&context=masters_theses_2

Continuous InkJet (CIJ) printing is a common 2-Dimensional printing technique that creates jets of ink that breakup into drops as they are propelled towards a substrate to create a print. Inkjet printing has been used not only to print on paper, but to manufacture a variety of devices including OLEDs, solar cells and microfluidic devices. In many cases, the ‘ink’ consists of a polymer dissolved in a volatile solvent. As this ink is sprayed on to the substrate, the solvent evaporates, leaving the polymer behind as the print. The addition of the polymer alters the physics of the problem significantly enough that it varies greatly from jetting only a fluid with nothing dissolved in it. Polymers impart viscoelasticity to the solution, creating ink jets that are long-lived and difficult to break into droplets. In order to maintain the formation of drops in a repeatable, uniform fashion, a disturbance of known magnitude is imposed upon the jet. While jetting a liquid with no additives in it, this disturbance governed jet breakup leads to the formation of satellite drops, smaller drops of fluid in-between the main jet drops. Satellite drops are an undesirable occurrence in inkjet printing because of their unpredictable behavior and potential to affect the quality of the print. However, the addition of polymers to the liquid can control and potentially suppress the formation of these satellite drops, greatly improving the print quality. The elasticity of iv the polymer and its ability to influence the jet behavior and formation of satellite drops is highly dependent on multiple factors including the backbone rigidity, molecular weight and the concentration in which it is present in the fluid. Strongly viscoelastic effects have a marked effect on the jet and their presence can be quantified quite easily. However, some polymers show weak viscoelastic behavior while present in the ink fluids and may or may not affect the jetting process. The objective of this study is to examine such a class of polymeric fluids that are weakly viscoelastic in the context of inkjet printing and satellite drop formation. Firstly, the fluids are tested in an extensional rheology setup called Capillary Breakup Extensional Rheometry – Drop-on-Substrate (CaBER-DoS) to quantify their extensional properties. Then, they are tested in an emulated inkjet printing setup. The goal is to quantify the impact of the aforementioned factors on jetting and using satellite drop behavior as a guiding metric to understanding viscoelastic behavior in inkjet printing fluids.