Design and fabrication of monolithic multidimensional data registration CMOS/MEMS ink-jet printhead

Abstract

A monolithic ink-jet printhead is designed and fabricated with back-shooting type of thermal bubble nucleation for high-speed and long-life printing in this paper. It combines micromechanics, including heating actuators, temperature sensor, channels, and nozzles, with an integrated multidimensional data registration CMOS demultiplexer driving circuit, which includes D flip-flop signal processing along with bidirectional data transfer and 12-V power amplifiers in a printhead chip. Microelectro-mechanical systems fabrication processes are applied to define the ink-firing chamber, feed channel, and the orifice plate within this new micro injector structure. In this paper, the printing resolution of this monolithic ink-jet head is 1200 dpi, and the diameter of nozzle orifice is about 14 μm with a thickness of 30 μm. Both the silicon dry and wet etching processes are applied to the fabrication of orifice plate with the control of thickness within ±4μm. The major advantage of the ink-jet chip assembly processes is that throughput is improved. The operating frequency of the monolithic ink-jet printhead developed in this paper is 24 kHz. The required voltage to start the bubble nucleation of printer head is 7.4 V, and the ink nozzle lifetime is 1.5 × 108. The optimization design of this monolithic ink-jet printhead could provide better printing quality than the commercial ones. © 2010 IEEE.