Electrohydrodynamic jet printing of PZT thick film micro-scale structures

© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. This paper reports the use of a printing technique, called electrohydrodynamic jet printing, for producing PZT thick film micro-scale structures without additional material removing processes. The PZT powder was ball-milled and the effect of milling time on the particle size was examined. This ball-milling process can significantly reduce the PZT particle size and help to prepare stable composite slurry suitable for the E-Jet printing. The PZT micro-scale structures with different features were produced. The PZT lines with different widths and separations were fabricated through the control of the E-Jet printing parameters. The widths of the PZT lines were varied from 80μm to 200μm and the separations were changed from 5μm to 200μm. In addition, PZT walled structures were obtained by multi-layer E-Jet printing. The E-Jet printed PZT thick films exhibited a relative permittivity (er) of ~233 and a piezoelectric constant (d33, f) of ~66pCN-1