Drop-on-Demand Ink-jet printing of Functional Materials: Case Studies of SU8 and NC based Polymer Nanocomposites

摘要

Ink-jet printing technique allows locally and precisely dispensing of materials for the manufacturing of micro-scale structures. We present two different applications: i) fabrication of convex microlenses using SU-8 a photo-curable epoxy-based polymer and ii) printing of color pixel arrays using differently sized CdSe@ZnS core-shell type nanocrystals (NCs) embedded in polystyrene. Patterns of such materials are printed on different substrates. We investigated the influence of the surface conditions on the size and shape of the printed patterns, which is affected by wetting properties. The size dependent optical properties of the NC based nanocomposite inks have been demonstrated to be retained in the printed structures.