A method to characterize and inspect the imprinting quality for a single dot in inkjet-printing

To feature the location and morphology of inkjet printed dots, the printing quality characterizing and testing method of inkjet printed single dot is established. The digital single dot image of several tens of single dot on the square lattice point was designed. Then, the single dot image as the testing pattern was printed. The optical reflectivity of the testing pattern on micrometer-scale was acquired by the optical microscope, CCD capturing and optical calibration. The shape and location of each dot are determined with the optical reflectivity. The ideal coordinate distribution of the several tens of dots is derived from the statistical distribution of the measured values. The difference between the two mentioned distributions is used to represent the location accuracy of the dots. The area of dot and the parameters derived by elliptical fitting of the border of the dot are used to characterize the shape quality of dot. The method is applied to the inkjet printing plate process. The location accuracy of dot reached to the level of several micrometers. The diameter of the single dot is about 30 micrometers. The major axis of the fitting ellipse of dot has the certain statistical quality indicators. It indicates that the method can provide a general quantification characterization of the location and morphology quality of inkjet printed dots. This method can meet the demand of testing and analysis on the inkjet printing.