Design of H-Shape Chamber in Thermal Bubble Printer.

Xishun Peng,Yibo Xie,Anjiang Lu,Jiawen Wu,Naitao Xu,Jin Cheng,Qiliang Sun

doi:10.3390/mi13020194

Abstract

The utilization rate of ink liquid in the chamber is critical for the thermal bubble inkjet head. The difficult problem faced by the thermal bubble inkjet printing is how to maximize the use of ink in the chamber and increase the printing frequency. In this paper, by adding a flow restrictor and two narrow channels into the chamber, the H-shape flow-limiting structure is formed. At 1.8 μs, the speed of bubble expansion reaches the maximum, and after passing through the narrow channel, the maximum reverse flow rate of ink decreased by 25%. When the vapor bubble disappeared, the ink fills the nozzle slowly. At 20 μs, after passing through the narrow channel, the maximum flow rate of the ink increases by 39%. The inkjet printing frequency is 40 kHz, and the volume of the ink droplet is about 13.1 pL. The structure improves the frequency of thermal bubble inkjet printing and can maximize the use of liquid in the chamber, providing a reference for cell printing, 3D printing, bioprinting, and other fields.

Highlights

Since the debut of the first commercial inkjet printer, made by Hewlett-PackardCorporation, in 1984, the size of its market has been constantly expanding [1,2]
With the cell bioprinting field continuously heating in recent years, because of the unique working way of thermal bubble printing [5], it causes a little damage to cells
The main reason is that the thermal bubble printing relies on heating resistors within 3 μs to instantaneously heat the ink to more than 300 ◦ C, and the overall temperature of the whole chamber only rises about 5–10 ◦ C [6,7], so most cells will not be inactivated by heating, in which the average survival rate is more than

Summary

Introduction

Since the debut of the first commercial inkjet printer, made by Hewlett-PackardCorporation, in 1984, the size of its market has been constantly expanding [1,2]. Since the debut of the first commercial inkjet printer, made by Hewlett-Packard. The application field of inkjet printing is limited to daily office printing and has become a hot topic in the fields of 3D printing and cell bioprinting [3,4]. Inkjet printers on the market are mainly divided into two kinds: thermal bubble inkjet printing and piezoelectric inkjet printing. Comparing with the latter, thermal bubble inkjet printing has a simple structure and lower cost. The research on thermal bubble inkjet printing has become the hot topic again. The main reason is that the thermal bubble printing relies on heating resistors within 3 μs to instantaneously heat the ink to more than 300 ◦ C, and the overall temperature of the whole chamber only rises about 5–10 ◦ C [6,7], so most cells will not be inactivated by heating, in which the average survival rate is more than

Methods

Results

Conclusion