A Strategy toward Realizing Ultrashort Channels and Microstructures Array by Piezoelectric Inkjet Printing

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2019 Oct 24;9(11):1515. doi: 10.3390/nano9111515.

Abstract

Inkjet printing has been proved to be a powerful tool in the cost-effective ambient deposition of functional materials for the fabrication of electronic devices in the past decades. However, restricted by equipment and inks, the feature size of printed dots or lines with conventional inkjet printing is usually limited to several tens of micrometers, which could not fit the requirements for the fabrication of large-area, high-resolution microscale, even nanoscale, structures. Therefore, various technical means were developed for breaking the equipment limits. Here, we report a strategy for realizing ultrashort channels and homogeneous microstructures arrays by a conventional piezoelectric inkjet printing technique without any additional pre-mask process on the substrate. This strategy extends application of piezoelectric inkjet printing technique to biological and technological areas.

Keywords: homogeneous; inkjet etching; inkjet printing; microstructures; “coffee-ring” effect.