High Precision Electrohydrodynamic Printing of Polymer Onto Microcantilever Sensors

We report electrohydrodynamic jet printing to deposit 2-27 μm diameter polymer droplets onto microcantilever sensors. The polymer droplets were deposited as single droplets or organized patterns, with sub-μm control over droplet diameter and position. The droplet size could be controlled through a pulse-modulated source voltage, while droplet position was controlled using a positioning stage. Gravimetry analyzed the polymer droplets by examining the shift in microcantilever resonance frequency resulting from droplet deposition. The resonance shift of 50-4130 Hz corresponded to a polymer mass of 4.5-135 pg. The electrohydrodynamic method is a precise way to deposit multiple materials onto micromechanical sensors with greater resolution and repeatability than current methods.