{"id":370,"date":"2016-07-22T10:46:05","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T10:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.profactor.at\/en\/?page_id=370"},"modified":"2025-01-16T14:46:59","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T13:46:59","slug":"multimaterial-inkjet-printing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.profactor.at\/en\/research\/additive-micro-and-nano-manufacturing\/multimaterial-inkjet-printing\/","title":{"rendered":"Multimaterial Inkjet Printing"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/div><\/div>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Inkjet printing allows the contactless deposition of coatings<\/strong> on various substrates. Drops with an exact defined amount of material are placed on predefined positions. Thus, the technique is highly economical in material use with low waste production. By using digital process chains the fabrication of highly individualized products is feasible. Coatings with different functions (e.g. electrical conductivity, waveguides, organic electronics, \u2026) can be produced through the use of functional inks. The production of functional coatings or devices requires multilayer inkjet printing<\/strong>. Therefore, inks have to be tuned and optimized to the material and geometry of the used substrates. This can be done by suitable substrate pretreatments and respective ink curing techniques. Currently, inkjet substrates are usually flat but individualized coatings on non-planar substrates grow in importance.<\/p>\n

\u201cVoxel Printing<\/strong>\u201d can be considered as special form of additive inkjet printing. A voxel (\u201cvolumetric pixel\u201d) represents a grid point in three-dimensional space. Voxel based 3D printers use inkjet printheads and curable liquid photopolymeric inks<\/strong>. The creation of objects is based on the direct curing of the photopolymers after placement. Each single drop represents one voxel. This allows a precise control of the structure (high resolution) and of the properties of the printed objects. Complex geometries<\/strong> with sophisticated details and delicate features can be achieved due to this high layer resolution. By using different inks in one printing job digital material objects can be created. Digital materials have unique properties by mixing of materials on the voxel scale. However, currently available materials are not always suitable for functional devices. A broader range of suitable materials is therefore of high interest. For example, implementing inks with metallic nanoparticles can lead to printing of conducting paths in 3D printed objects.<\/p>\n

PROFACTOR deals with the following challenges in process and material development:<\/p>\n