The study of electrohydrodynamic printing by numerical simulation

Xue Yang – Rui Liu – Lu Li – Zhifu Yin – Kai Chen – Dong Fang Wang

   EHD (Electrohydrodynamic) printing is a promising technique for alternative fabrication of highresolution micro- and nanostructures without employment of any molds or photo-masks However, the printing precision can be easily influenced by the printing conditions, such as applied voltage, printing distance (the distance between the nozzle tip and the substrate), and flow rate. Unfortunately, up to now there was no work which analyzed those influencing factors in-depth and systematically by theory and numerical simulation. In this paper, the theory of EHD printing was presented and the effect of applied voltage, printing distance, and flow rate on the width of printed line was analyzed by numerical simulation. The simulation results showed that the width of printed lines is proportional to printing distance, nozzle size, and flow rate. However, it is inversely proportional to the applied voltage.

Keywords: electrohydrodynamic printing, numerical simulation, electrohydrodynamic theory, printing nozzle

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