Analysis of Electrostatic Ejection for Liquid Droplets

정전기력에 의한 액적 토출 분석

An electrostatic ink jet head can be used for manufacturing processes of large display systems and printed circuit boards (PCB) as well as inkjet printers because an electrostatic field provides an external force which can be manipulated to control sizes of droplets. The existing printing methods such as thermal bubble and piezo inkjet heads have shown difficulties to control the ejection of the droplets for printing applications. Thus, the new inkjet head using the electrostatic force has been proposed in this study. In order to prove the theory of the developed electrostatic ink jet head, the applicable and basic theory has been studied using distilled water and water with sodium dodecyl surfate (SDS). Also, a numerical analysis has been performed to calculate the intensity of the electrostatic field using the Maxwell's equation. Furthermore, experiments have been carried out using a downward glass capillary with outside diameter of $500{\mu}m$. The gravity, surface tension, and electrostatic force have been analyzed with high voltages of 0 to 5kV. It has been observed that the droplet size decreases and the frequency of the droplet formation and the velocity of the droplet ejection increase with increasing the intensity of the electrostatic field. The results of the experiments have shown good agreement with those of numerical analysis.