Drop-on-Demand Printing of Highly Viscous Inks

Screen printing remains the dominant method for fabricating printed electronics, largely due to the availability of highly-loaded functional inks that achieve desired product performance in a single pass. These inks typically have high viscosities (>>5k cP) due to their high material loading.

If we wish to use similarly viscous functional inks in a digitally-defined process we know that we cannot use conventional inkjet printing as it relies on low viscosity inks (<100cps).

At PEL, we have developed innovative processes and systems for digital deposition using Piezovalve viscous-jet deposition and other methods. This technology enables drop-on-demand printing of extremely viscous materials. In this presentation, we'll demonstrate several viable methods for digitally printing such highly viscous functional materials.