A Thermal Ink-Jet Printer Head Prototype With Full Carbon Based Microbubble Generator

This paper presents the development of a novel thermal ink-jet printer head prototype using full carbon-based microbubble generators with carbon nanotubes as heating elements and graphene as electrodes. Meanwhile, each microbubble generator is equipped with a carbon nanotube sensor to real-timely probe the temperature of its surrounding micro-environment. With an array of microbubble generators and sensors fabricated on quartz glass, as well as a microfluidic structure constructed by the micromachined silicon, the printer head prototype is formed by an anodic silicon-glass bonding process with several scattered graphene film flakes as medium. Droplet ejection with volume as tiny as ~0.03 pl corresponding to a very high spatial resolution of >2000 dpi driven by two microbubble valves is demonstrated by the printing unit in the prototype. Increasing the input power cannot only speed up the bubble nucleation and growth, but also improve the utilizing efficiency of electric heating energy. The experimental detected temperature variation in the printing unit reveals its nonlinear heat convection property by comparison with the theoretical calculation by finite-element analysis.