Piezoelectric inkjet technique

Derived from standard desktop printers, drop-on-demand techniques, such as electrohydrodynamic jet (e-jet) printing, solid freeform fabrication (SFF), or piezoelectric inkjet printing, are among a few notable examples of rapid prototyping techniques that have been developed to pattern biomaterials. With the incorporation of a user friendly computer interface, these techniques have been employed to process a number of multiplexed, biomaterial constructs without the use of masks, stamps, or any other time consuming processing equipment. The design of such constructs with minimal feature sizes in the microliter to picoliter resolution has been demonstrated and will be discussed below. 

Figure 25.2 schematically shows the inner structure of an inkjet printer with bend mode [22] piezoelectric DOD technique. Due to the pressure generated by a voltage-pulse driven piezoelectric actuator, liquid is ejected out of small orifices... 

Multianalyte detection in a single sample has been reported extensively using electrochemical, piezoelectric, electrical resistance, - and oph-capo 11,33 39 methods. The sensor arrays were fabricated by photolithography and soft lithography, - inkjet-, screen-, and pin-prinhng, - and photodeposition.i 34,i4,45 jhese techniques involve labor-intensive multistep fabrication and image analysis and pattern-recognihon codes. The monochromatic or multicolor OLED excitation platform in (micro)arrays would drastically simplify fabrication and reduce cost. 

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