Bar-Levav Elkana, Witman Moshe, Einat Moshe
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Ariel University, Ariel 4070000, Israel.
Micromachines (Basel). 2020 May 14;11(5):499. doi: 10.3390/mi11050499.
In this paper, the failure mechanisms of the thermal inkjet thin-film resistors are recognized. Additionally, designs of resistors to overcome these mechanisms are suggested and tested by simulation and experiment. The resulting resistors are shown to have improved lifetimes, spanning an order of magnitude up to 2 × 10 pulses. The thermal failure mechanisms were defined according to the electric field magnitude in three critical points-the resistor center, the resistor-conductor edge, and the resistor thermal "hot spots". Lowering the thermal gradients between these points will lead to the improved lifetime of the resistors. Using MATLAB PDE simulations, various resistors shapes, with different electric field ratios in the hot spots, were designed and manufactured on an 8'' silicon wafer. A series of lifetime experiments were conducted on the resistors, and a strong relation between the shape and the lifetime of the resistor was found. These results have immediate ramifications regarding the different printing apparatuses which function with thermal inkjet technology, allowing the commercial production of larger thermal printheads with high MTBF rate. Such heads may fit fast and large 3D printers.
本文识别了热喷墨薄膜电阻器的失效机制。此外，提出了克服这些机制的电阻器设计，并通过模拟和实验进行了测试。结果表明，所得电阻器的寿命得到了改善，跨越了一个数量级，高达2×10个脉冲。根据电阻器中心、电阻器-导体边缘和电阻器热“热点”这三个关键点的电场强度定义了热失效机制。降低这些点之间的热梯度将提高电阻器的寿命。使用MATLAB偏微分方程模拟，在8英寸硅片上设计并制造了具有不同热点电场比的各种电阻器形状。对这些电阻器进行了一系列寿命实验，发现电阻器的形状与寿命之间存在密切关系。这些结果对采用热喷墨技术的不同打印设备具有直接影响，使得能够商业化生产具有高平均无故障时间率的更大的热打印头。这种打印头可能适用于快速且大型的3D打印机。
