The theoretical model and verification of electric-field-driven jet 3D printing for large-height and conformal micro/nano-scale parts

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jet printing, as one of the most popular micro/nano-scale additive manufacturing methods, is still facing challenges in large-height printing and conformal printing due to poor electric field stability. The newly proposed electric field-driven (EFD) jet 3D printing has claimed better electric field stability. To reveal changing behaviour and generation mechanism of the electric field in 3D printing, an electric field model for EFD jet 3D printing was built and further validated by simulation and experiments (line width and critical voltage vs. printing height). Then, the advantage of the EFD method over EHD was confirmed by a case application of conformal printing with a height difference of larger than 9 mm and a multi-layer structure with a height of 5 mm and a line width of 20 mu m. Therefore, the EFD jet 3D printing offers the possibility of achieving 3D printing in a larger height range with better electric field stability.