There is no doubt that digital deposition of functional materials, or more accurately functional fluids, using ink jet printheads is an extremely attractive proposition. Being able to place a tiny and highly controlled amount of fluid to a few microns of placement accuracy has the potential to drastically transform conventional manufacturing processes.

Whether the functional fluids have electronic, pharmaceutical or other important attributes, the challenges of getting them to "jet" with suitable performance and to "functionalize" on the target substrate are often comment headaches for the materials deposition community.

IMI's Ink Jet Deposition Course will focus on the practicalities of ink jet printing of what we may call "challenging fluids." We will consider in detail the basic building blocks of a material deposition ink jet system: printheads, ink/fluid, motion system, substrate and methods available to make the working printed structures. In addition we will provide a background on how we can "fine tune" fluids and their jetting waveforms to improve performance.

IMI's Ink Jet Deposition Course will provide a sometimes salutary background on the conventional manufacturing capabilities that must be matched for material deposition by ink jet to move into large scale production environments.