High precision electrohydrodynamic printing of polymer onto microcantilever sensors

This thesis reports electrohydrodynamic jet printing to deposit 2 ??? 27 um diameter polymer droplets onto microcantilever sensors. The polymer droplets were deposited as single droplets or organized patterns, with sub-??m control over droplet diameter and position. The droplet size could be controlled through a pulse-modulated source voltage, while droplet position was controlled using a positioning stage. Gravimetry analyzed the polymer droplets by examining the shift in microcantilever resonance frequency resulting from droplet deposition. The resonance shift of 50 - 4130 Hz corresponded to a polymer mass of 4.5 - 135 pg. The electrohydrodynamic method is a precise way to deposit multiple materials onto micromechanical sensors with greater resolution and repeatability than current methods