摘要:
A "roofshooter" pagewidth printhead for use in a thermal ink jet printing device is fabricated by forming a plurality of subunits, each being produced by bonding a heater substrate having an architecture including an array of heater elements and an etched ink feed slot to a secondary substrate having a series of spaced feed hole openings to form a combined substrate in which said series of spaced feed hole openings communicates with said ink feed slot, and dicing said combined substrates through said ink feed slot to form a subunit. An array of butted subunits having a length equal to one pagewidth is formed by butting one of said subunits against an adjacent subunit. The array of butted subunits is bonded to a pagewidth support substrate. The secondary substrate provides an integral support structure for maintaining the alignment of the heater plate which, if diced through the feed hole without the secondary substrate, would separate into individual pieces, thereby complicating the alignment and assembly process.
摘要:
An improved thermal ink jet printhead and method of fabrication thereof is disclosed of the type formed by the mating and bonding of first and second substrates. The first substrate is silicon with {100} crystal plane surfaces and has anisotropically etched in one surface thereof a linear series of separate through recesses and a plurality of parallel, elongated ink channels grooves. The second substrate has a plurality of heating elements and addressing electrodes patterned on one surface thereof. The through recesses serve as a segmented ink reservoir with each segment having an ink inlet, and the elongated ink channel grooves having one end adjacent the segmented reservoir and the opposite end open to serve as ink droplet emitting nozzles. Each segment of the segmented reservoir is isolated from each other by dividing walls. The dividing walls strengthen the printhead, and the separate through recesses reduce the effects of angular misalignment between mask and first substrate crystal planes. In the preferred embodiment, a thick film insulative layer is sandwiched between the first and second substrates and patterned to form recesses therein to provide the means for placing the segmented reservoir into communication with the ink channel grooves. To produce a multicolor printing printhead, the thick film layer is patterned to form a linear series of recesses, each substantially equal in length to an associated one of the reservoir segments, so that each reservoir segment may have a different colored ink supplied thereto that cannot mix with the ink of the other reservoir segments.
摘要:
A method for separating chips formed on a silicon substrate is provided which uses a combination of reactive ion etching techniques combined with orientation etching to yield integrated chips having edges which can be more precisely butted together to form large area arrays.
摘要:
Several fabricating processes for ink jet printheads are disclosed, each printhead being composed of two parts aligned and bonded together. One part is a substantially flat substrate which contains on the surface thereof a lineal array of heating elements and addressing electrodes, and the second part is a substrate having at least one recess anisotropically etched therein to serve as an ink supply manifold when the two parts are bonded together. A lineal array of parallel grooves are formed in the second part, so that one end of the grooves communicate with the manifold recess an the other ends are open for use as an ink droplet expelling nozzles. Many printheads can be made simultaneously by producing a plurality of sets of heating elements array with their addressing electrodes on a silicon wafer and by placing alignment marks thereon at predetermined locations. A corresponding plurality of sets of channels and associated manifolds are produced in a second silicon wafer and, in one embodiment, alignment openings are etched thereon at predetermined locations. The two wafers are aligned via the alignment openings and alignment marks, then bonded together and diced into many separate printheads. A number of printheads can be fixedly mounted in a pagewidth configuration which confronts a moving recording medium for pagewidth printing or individual printheads may be adapted for carriage type ink jet printing.
摘要:
A multi-color roofshooter type thermal ink jet printhead includes a common heater substrate having at least two arrays of heating elements and a corresponding number of elongated feed slots, each heater array being located adjacent its corresponding feed slot. A common channel substrate is layered above a heater substrate and includes arrays of nozzles corresponding in number to the arrays of heating elements, each nozzle array communicating with one of the feed slots on the heater substrate. Each nozzle array is isolated from an adjacent nozzle array and each nozzle of each nozzle array is aligned above a respective heating element of a corresponding heater array. Each of the heater arrays is individually addressed and driven by switching circuitry located on the heater substrate adjacent to its corresponding heater array. The switching circuitry can be active driver matrices corresponding in number to the arrays of heating elements. The locations of the driver matrices preferably alternate with locations of the feed slots. With this construction, multi-color printheads can be efficiently arranged on a single wafer, so that silicon real estate is conserved. The switching circuitry can also be used to address an array of heating elements in a mono-color thermal inkjet printhead. In a preferred embodiment, inputs of the switching circuitry extend from sides of the switching circuitry whereby distances between adjacent feed slots are minimized.
摘要:
Disclosed is a method of fabricating a precision etched, three dimensional device from a silicon wafer, wherein the etching is done from one side of the wafer using a two step silicon etching process. A two-sided deposition of a robust protective layer, such as polycrystalline silicon, is placed over a two-sided deposition of a chemical masking layer such as silicon dioxide. The two layers are concurrently patterned with first and second sets of vias on one side of the wafer, while the opposite side is protected by the protective layer. The protective layer is removed to permit deposition of a second masking layer such as silicon nitride, followed by deposition of a second protective layer. Again, the second protective layer prevents damage to the fragile second masking layer on the wafer backside while its frontside is patterned with a similar set of vias aligned with the first set of vias in the first masking layer. This similar set of vias is sequentially formed in both the second protective layer and the underlying second masking layers. Then the wafer is placed in an etchant bath so that the first set of recesses is anisotropically etched in the wafer frontside side. Next, the second protective layer and second masking layer are removed to permit anisotropic etching of the second set of recesses through the second set of vias in the first masking layer. If the protective layer is polycrystalline silicon, it is concurrently etch-removed during the initial etching of the silicon wafer.
摘要:
A large array ink jet printhead is disclosed having two basic parts, one containing an array of heating elements and addressing electrodes on the surface thereof, and the other containing the liquid ink handling system. At least the part containing the ink handling system is silicon and is assembled from generally identical sub-units aligned and bonded side-by-side on the part surface having the heating element array. Each channel plate sub-unit has an etched manifold with means for supplying ink thereto and a plurality of parallel ink channel grooves open on one end and communicating with the manifold at the other. The surfaces of the channel plate sub-units contacting each other are {111} planes formed by anisotropic etching. The channel plate sub-units appear to have a parallelogram shape when viewed from a direction parallel with and confronting the ink channel groove open ends. The heating element array containing part may also be assembled from etched silicon sub-units with their abutting surfaces being {111} planes. In another embodiment, a plurality of channel plate sub-units are anisotropically etched in a silicon wafer and a plurality of heating element sub-units are formed on another silicon wafer. The heating element wafer is also anisotropically etched with elongated slots. The wafers are aligned and bonded together, then diced into complete printhead sub-units which have abutting side surfaces that are {111} planes for accurate side-by-side assembly.
摘要:
Several fabricating processes for ink jet printheads are disclosed, each printhead being composed of two parts aligned and bonded together. One part is a substantially flat substrate which contains on the surface thereof a lineal array of heating elements and addressing electrodes, and the second part is a substrate having at least one recess anisotropically etched therein to serve as an ink supply manifold when the two parts are bonded together. A lineal array of parallel grooves are formed in the second part, so that one end of the grooves communicate with the manifold recess an the other ends are open for use as an ink droplet expelling nozzles. Many printheads can be made simultaneously by producing a plurality of sets of heating elements array with their addressing electrodes on a silicon wafer and by placing alignment marks thereon at predetermined locations. A corresponding plurality of sets of channels and associated manifolds are produced in a second silicon wafer and, in one embodiment, alignment openings are etched thereon at predetermined locations. The two wafers are aligned via the alignment openings and alignment marks, then bonded together and diced into many separate printheads. A number of printheads can be fixedly mounted in a pagewidth configuration which confronts a moving recording medium for pagewidth printing or individual printheads may be adapted for carriage type ink jet printing.
摘要:
An improved method of fabricating a thermal ink jet printhead of the type produced by the mating of an anisotropically etched silicon substrate containing ink flow directing recesses with a substrate having heating elements and addressing electrodes is disclosed. An etch resistant material on one surface of a (100) silicon substrate is patterned to form at least two sets of vias therein having predetermined sizes, shapes, and predetermined spacing therebetween. The predetermined spacing permits selected complete undercutting by an anisotropic etchant within a predetermined etching time period. The patterned silicon substrate is anisotropically etched for the predetermined time period to form at least two sets of separate recesses, each recess being separated from each other by a wall, the surfaces of the walls being {111} crystal planes of the silicon substrate, whereby certain predetermined separately etched recesses are selectively placed into communication with each other by the selective undercutting while the remainder of the undercut walls provide strengthening reinforcement to the printhead, so that larger printheads may be fabricated which are more robust without relinquishing resolution or reducing tolerances.
摘要:
A continuous stream type ink jet printhead utilizing constant thermal pulses to perturbate the ink streams emitted through a plurality of nozzles to break up the ink streams into droplets at a fixed distance from the nozzles whereat the drops are individually charged by a charging electrode in accordance with digitized data signals. Each printhead has a manifold, a plurality of ink channels communicating at one end with the manifold and terminating at the other end with nozzles, and at least one resistor addressed by a predetermined frequency of current pulses for applying thermal pulses to the ink. In one embodiment, a resistor is positioned in each of the channels adjacent the nozzles and in another embodiment, a single resistor is located in the ink manifold. The resistors are pulsed at low power to generate a perturbation of ink properties such as density, viscosity, or surface tension without producing a phase change in the ink.