Amorphous Metal Thin Films for Thermal Inkjet Printing

Due to the lack of grain boundaries, an amorphous metal thin film (AMTF) provides advantageous mechanical properties and enhanced chemical stability, which may enable its use as a thinner cavitation plate for thermal inkjet (TIJ) printing. A thinner cavitation plate leads to improved thermal performance. However, if an AMTF is to be used as a cavitation plate, it must remain amorphous during TIJ operation. In this paper, we fabricate TIJ resistors using a thermally stable (crystallization temperature >1000 °C) Ta
₃₀
W
₃₀
Si
₄₀
AMTF and stress the material in an open-pool test bed. This tests the stability of the thin film properties after being exposed to a TIJ-like environment. We find that the Ta
₃₀
W
₃₀
Si
₄₀
AMTF retains its amorphous structure after testing to >10
⁷
pulses in the simulated TIJ environment. This suggests that Ta
₃₀
W
₃₀
Si
₄₀
AMTF is a promising candidate material for TIJ cavitation plate applications.