Experimental Qualification of the Process of Electrostatic Spray Deposition

The electrostatic spray deposition (ESD) is a method of coating thin films based on electrostatic atomization. This paper proposes a method of quantifying the transport of droplets using images of spray patterns measured by the vision system during the ESD process, and verifies by experiment the correlation between the quantified parameters for the dispersion shape of the spray and the thickness of the deposited thin film. When using the proposed method, the ESD process can be optimized simply by monitoring variations of the spray shapes caused by the process conditions. In addition, the proposed method can be applicable to the in-line monitoring method of the variation in the transport of droplets during the ESD process.