Dynamic characteristics of a piezoelectric driven inkjet printhead fabricated using MEMS technology

To understand the residual vibration of the piezoelectric diaphragm in a piezo (PZT) driven inkjet printhead fabricated on silicon wafers by MEMS manufacturing process, the transfer function of the piezo velocity to sinusoidal input voltage is obtained in the experiments. The piezo velocity can be predicted using the obtained velocity transfer function with discrete Fourier transform of a trapezoidal waveform. In the low amplitude of voltage waveform, the spectrum shows a good agreement between the predicted and measured velocities of the piezo diaphragm. However, when the drop is ejected from the nozzle orifice with actual amplitude of the voltage waveform, the spectrum of the piezo velocity shows more complicated frequency components due to the reflected pressure waves and fluid motion inside the chamber. In this study it has been attempted to obtain the transfer function of the piezo velocity to the voltage input when the drops are fired. The simulated results of the piezo displacement with the various durations of the voltage waveform show a good agreement with the drop volume and velocity measured in experiments. In addition, it was found that suppressing the residual oscillations was closely related to eliminating the satellite drop formation, which was confirmed with the strobe stand drop visualization. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.