This technology is meant to significantly increase the printing speed of the piezoelectric ink jet printheads.
About
1. It can increase the printing frequency to allow each nozzle to produce more droplets per second without sacrificing the printing resolution. 2. It can allow more nozzles to be packed into the printhead and thus increase the overall printing speed of the printhead. 3. This technology can be readily used in existing piezoelectric ink jet printheads, which reduces the cost of adoption.
Key Benefits
1. 2D printing: this is nearly a 1 trillion dollar market, currently dominated by non-digital printing methods. While ink jet has many advantages over these non-digital printing methods, its printing speed is too slow to compete in terms of cost and productivity. This technology can potentially increase ink jet printing speed by ~10 times, which will completely change the game and render other printing methods obsolete. 2. Printed electronics: this is a fast-growing multi-billion dollar market and ink jet has already established as one of the major printing methods for printed electronics. The increase of inkjet printing speed by ~10 times will significantly reduce the cost of printed electronics and help the growth of the printed electronics market and also possibly increase its market share among other printing methods. 3. 3D printing: inkjet is currently uniquely positioned in the 3D printing industry compared to other 3D printing methods due to its high resolution and its natural support of multi-color and multi-material printing. It's used in both direct material deposition ink jet printers and powder-bed based 3D printers to deposit binders. Increase of the printing speed by ~10 times will significantly reduce the cost of manufacturing with these 3D printers and make it possible to use these printers for medium to high volume production, which will significantly impact the manufacturing industry and transition our society into an age of digital manufacturing.
Applications
The product will be a new type of ink jet printhead that can print significantly faster than existing ink jet printheads without sacrificing any other metrics. These ink jet printheads can be used in 20 ink jet printers, ink jet printers for printed electronics, and 30 ink jet printers.