Events

Digital printing capabilities have compelling potential to leverage advances in computation and artificial intelligence for accelerated development and fabrication of functional devices. This presentation will focus on aerosol jet printing, describing research efforts to understand physical mechanisms and leverage this knowledge to improve process control and establish unique patterning capabilities.

In aerosol jet printing, micron-scale droplets of a liquid ink containing functional materials (e.g., nanoparticles) are deposited onto a substrate using focused gas flows, while a robotic motion system facilitates patterning of complex structures. This work will highlight a series of experiments to understand the process based on basic principles of multiphase flow and mass transport, providing insight into ink formulation, printhead design, and process optimization. This basic description of the technology informs a wide range of current efforts, including real-time process monitoring for closed-loop control, rational ink formulation and process development for high aspect ratio patterning, materials and process development for conformal printing, and multi-material and reactive printing modalities.

Ethan B. Secor is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Iowa State University. He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University in 2017, where his research centered on the development and application of graphene-based inks in printed electronics. As a Truman Postdoctoral Fellow at Sandia National Laboratories from 2017-2020, he studied fundamentals of aerosol jet printing and developed custom printing capabilities to explore new deposition modalities, work that has continued since joining Iowa State in 2020.