Plasma micronozzle adapter
| DWPI Title: Plasma micro nozzle adapter for printing three dimensional (3D) elements, comprises lensing electrodes being located internal and external to body; and termination elements that adapted to lens plasma jet using electrostatic lensing or magnetostatic lensing, and connected to lensing electrodes |
| Abstract: Plasma micro nozzle adapters having various configurations and operating principles are disclosed. The plasma micro nozzle adapter is employed with a commercial plasma jet printer to produce smaller printed features than those possible with the original plasma jet printer. In a first class of embodiments, the plasma micro nozzle adapter narrows a plasma jet using electrostatic or magnetostatic lensing, permitting the printing of ceramic, metallic, dielectric, or plastic features with line widths of 10 μm or less. In a second class of embodiments, the plasma micro nozzle adapter narrows the plasma jet using a gas sheath. By adjusting the flow rate or pressure of the gas used to form the gas sheath, the cross-sectional shape of the plasma jet may form, for example, an ellipse, thereby controlling the width of the printed feature. A third class of embodiments employs both electrostatic (or magnetostatic) lensing along with the gas sheath. |
| Use: Plasma micro nozzle adapter for printing three dimensional (3D) elements having geometries as small as several microns using a commercial plasma jet printer. |
| Advantage: The plasma micro nozzle adapter improves existing commercial 3D plasma jet printer performance by approximately 10-fold to enable smaller printed features, including, for example, high-density chip copper interconnects. |
| Novelty: Plasma micro nozzle adapter (700) comprises body (705) having a plasma orifice (715) defining a central plasma axis (725); one or more lensing electrodes whose each electrode being located one or more of internal and external to the body; and one or more termination elements that adapted to lens a plasma jet using electrostatic lensing or magnetostatic lensing, the one or more termination elements being electrically connected to the one or more lensing electrodes. |
| Filed: 1/20/2021 |
| Application Number: US17152942A |
| Tech ID: SD 14959.1 |
| This invention was made with Government support under Contract No. DE-NA0003525 awarded by the United States Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration. The Government has certain rights in the invention. |
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