Study of Overlapping Adjacent Jets for Effective Laser-Induced Forward Transfer Printing

Abstract

Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is a well-established, versatile additive manufacturing technology for orifice-free printing of highly viscous solutions and suspensions. In order to improve the efficiency of point-wise LIFT printing, an optical scanner is integrated into the laser printing system to enable the formation of overlapping adjacent jets used for deposition. The objective of this study is to evaluate the ejection behavior and deposition performance under such conditions during LIFT printing for further improvement. The effects of the overlap of adjacent jets are investigated in terms of jet formation and material deposition processes, capturing the jet tilting phenomenon caused by the perturbance induced by previously formed jet(s). The feasibility of optical scanner-assisted LIFT printing of viscous metal-based ink suspension has been successfully demonstrated during conductive line printing with induced overlapping jets. Investigation of various overlap ratios of adjacent jets found that a 30% jet overlap and a 133 µs time interval between laser pulses are optimal, in terms of deposition quality and ejection stability, even when a tilted jet ejection is present for the laser and material system in this study. Furthermore, multilayer polygonal and interdigitated structures are successfully deposited under these identified printing conditions. With the inclusion of an optical scanner, LIFT printing efficiency for viscous inks can be improved as the usage of higher laser frequencies is enabled, providing a faster orifice-free laser printing methodology.