title: Inkjet Printing of Colloidal Nanospheres: Engineering the Evaporation-Driven Self-Assembly Process to Form Defined Layer Morphologies.
abstract: We report on inkjet printing of aqueous colloidal suspensions containing monodisperse silica and/or polystyrene nanosphere particles and a systematic study of the morphology of the deposits as a function of different parameters during inkjet printing and solvent evaporation. The colloidal suspensions act as a model ink for an understanding of layer formation processes and resulting morphologies in inkjet printing in general. We investigated the influence of the surface energy and the temperature of the substrate, the formulation of the suspensions, and the multi-pass printing aiming for layer stacks on the morphology of the deposits. We explain our findings with models of evaporation-driven self-assembly of the nanosphere particles in a liquid droplet and derive methods to direct the self-assembly processes into distinct one- and two-dimensional deposit morphologies.
authors.affiliation: Digital Printing and Imaging Technology, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09126, Chemnitz, Germany. enrico.sowade@mb.tu-chemnitz.de.
authors.forename: Enrico
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sowade
authors.affiliation: Digital Printing and Imaging Technology, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09126, Chemnitz, Germany. thomas.blaudeck@zfm.tu-chemnitz.de.|Center for Microtechnologies, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09107, Chemnitz, Germany. thomas.blaudeck@zfm.tu-chemnitz.de.
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Blaudeck
authors.affiliation: Digital Printing and Imaging Technology, Technische Universität Chemnitz, 09126, Chemnitz, Germany. reinhard.baumann@mb.tu-chemnitz.de.|Department Printed Functionalities, Fraunhofer Institute for Electronic Nanosystems, 09126, Chemnitz, Germany. reinhard.baumann@mb.tu-chemnitz.de.
authors.forename: Reinhard R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Baumann
keywords: Colloidal suspension; Inkjet printing; Self-assembly