Fabrication and Testing of an Ink-Jet Head Based on Buckling Behavior (Special Issue on Micromachine Technology)

概要

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An ink-jet head using a buckling diaphragm microactuator is described. The microactuator is composed of a silicon substrate, silicon dioxide insulator, nickel heater layer and electro-plated nickel diaphragm. All the edges of the diaphragm are fixed on the substrate and a narrow gap is formed between the diaphragm and the substrate. A nozzle plate is connected to the actuator by an adhesive spacer to get the ink-jet head. An ink chamber is formed by the surfaces of the diaphragm, the nozzle plate, and the side wall of the spacer. When the diaphragm is heated, thermally induced compressive stress causes the diaphragm to buckle rapidly and the diaphragm simultaneously deflects toward the nozzle plate. The deflection raises the pressure in the ink chamber and an ink droplet is then ejected through the nozzle. The head design was carried out using mechanical analysis of a buckling model, and heat transfer simulation. The diaphragm made from nickel is 300μm diameter and 2μm-thick. The narrow gap is 0.4μm. The cathode current density in nickel sulphamate solution used for nickel electro-plating of the diaphragm was 20mA/cm^2. An ink droplet has been ejected with a velocity of 8m/s while the ink-jet head is operated by heating the diaphragm with a current of 510mA at 16.6V for 10μs at 1.8kHz.
社団法人電子情報通信学会の論文
1997-02-25