Design and fabrication of microfluidic inkjet chip with high voltage ESD protection system for DNA droplets arrangement and detection

This article describes the aims to establish a thermal inkjet (TIJ) printhead with multi-channel driven simultaneously for DNA droplet arrangement. It proposed a monolithic CMOS/MEMS system with multi-level output voltage ESD protection system for protected inkjet printhead. High voltage power, low voltage logic and CMOS/MEMS architecture were integrated in inkjet chip. It used bulk micromachining technology (MEMS). On-chip high voltage electrostatic discharge (HV-ESD) protection design in smart power technology of monolithic inkjet chip is a challenging issue. The time interleaving scanning sequence is controlled spatially on the jet elements to avoid the strong interference with DNA droplets caused by the excitation of the neighbor driven elements. A heating element, disposed on the substrate, includes a conductor loop which does not encompass the heating elements on the substrate. The configuration of the heater jet significantly reduces both electromagnetic and capacitance interference caused by the heating elements. The simulation and experience result has shown in the research. It is reduced nearly half the time compared to the case with traditional scanning sequence. This experiment develops new controlled structure designs of chip for inkjet printheads. A TIJ device is designed, several of the architectures may be adjusted just a small microns to improve and optimize the DNA drop nucleation and generation efficiency. The DNA droplet ejection behavior of the multiplexer inkjet printhead within 10 μm orifice size has been measured beyond 26 kHz operation system, 3 pL capacity of ejected DNA droplet volume.