An Experimental Setup for Bucket Brigade Toner Transport

Abstract

Traveling electrostatic waves rather than mechanical systems can be used to transport charged toner particles as a controlled aerosol. Extensive theoretical and experimental work on this subject has been done by Masuda, Schmidlin and Melcher et al. These authors used experimental setups with electrodes arranged in a grid structure. Multiple phase shifted sinusoidal voltages were applied to the groups of these electrodes to generate a traveling electrostatic wave.As an alternative to using sinusoidal voltages, we propose a new method. Charged toner particles are transported utilizing the bucket brigade principle as it is used in charged-coupled devices (CCD).For experimental work, a programmable 4-channel high voltage multiplexer has been developed which is able to switch voltages up to 1500 V. A traveling electrostatic wave suitable for toner transport is generated by multiplexing the voltages applied to groups of electrodes in an appropriate manner.In first promising experiments using a Masuda panel, particle transport was achieved with conductive, magnetic monocomponent toner. At low switching frequencies, the charged toner particles moved synchronously in the direction of the traveling wave. A critical frequency was found at which propagation in both directions appeared and above this frequency backwards transport was observed.