Droplet tailoring using evaporative inkjet printing

An experimental study into the in-flight evaporation and impact of equally sized inkjet printed droplets that consist of a systematically varied polystyrene concentration in either toluene or butyl acetate is presented. At low polymer concentrations, a linear relationship that decreased was observed between dried droplet diameter and printing height. However, increased concentrations revealed an initial exponential decay in the dried droplet diameter, which stabilized at greater heights. At higher concentration and height, the polymer forms a skin on the surface of the inkjet printed droplet, which causes inhibition of the in-flight evaporation of the solvent.