An ASIC design for managing thermal inkjet heater array chip with integrated power drivers and logic addressing

A thermal bubble jet printhead design suitable for high speed and long life printing has been developed. It combines micromechanics including heating actuators, temperature sensor, channels and nozzles with a smart CMOS circuit including D Flip-Flops signal-processing along with bi-directional data transfer and 12V power amplifiers in a printhead chip. The asymmetric HV device structure (HV only apply on the Drain side, not source side) is recommended for lower Ron and higher current drive purpose. All of the jets of the printhead are controlled by very few input linesa pulse shape (ENABLE), a data line (DATA), a bit shift clock (BIT SHIFT), a state clearing pulse, 5-volt supply for the logic devices, a higher voltage for energizing the heater resisters, and a ground line. The study for application-specific integrated circuit (ASICs) within the inkjet system controller has been finished. Some inkjet process calculations are sufficiently time-urgent and/or extensive that it makes sense to design an ASIC to manage these tasks, we have fabricated a chip size 9000um×8000um printhead beyond 400 nozzles have a 5 pl. ink drop volume.