19. June 2024 by kmoeller 0 Comments

Welcome Scrona

Scrona is a spin-off of ETH Zurich founded in 2014. The start-up specializes in electrostatic multi-nozzle printing technology for additive industrial microfabrication. Scrona has developed a printer that combines ultra-high resolution with high throughput, enabling advances in microfabrication. This technology allows printing with higher resolution and more viscous material than traditional inkjet printing processes. Scrona holds the world record for the smallest printed color photo.
 
Establishing and maintaining global market leadership
Current manufacturing techniques lack either the scalability or the benefits of additive manufacturing. Scrona is on the verge of commercializing a technical breakthrough by introducing a scalable printing solution characterized by resolution, robustness and versatility (e.g. usable materials) that offers customers significant cost advantages. The unique combination of high resolution and high throughput will reinvent micro manufacturing.

Industrial microfabrication as a lengthy process

Today, industrial microfabrication is often a very lengthy process that involves a large number of steps to produce the end product (in particular the etching away of unnecessary material). To avoid this, so-called inkjet manufacturing can be used. This is an additive manufacturing process that uses print nozzles that use an electronic control system to spray ink onto a substrate to produce it. This essentially reduces the above-mentioned process to two steps: Printing and curing in the oven.

In conventional inkjet generation, an electrical charge (static electricity) is used to push ink droplets out of the print nozzles. In piezo printing, this charge is used to change the shape of materials in the print head (piezoelectric materials), which in turn push the droplet out of the nozzle. The result is twofold: the droplets can only be as small as the nozzle, which limits the resolution. Only materials with a relatively low viscosity (thin materials that flow easily like water, not honey) can be ejected. On the one hand, this has a negative effect on dissolution, as the droplet dries more slowly and lies 5-10 times flatter on the substrate. It also means that certain materials that are of interest for production cannot be printed.

 

What makes Scrona so interesting? 

Scrona offers an electrostatic injection printhead that draws the liquid from outside the nozzle. A charge is applied to the ink droplet, which is then propelled forward using deflection plates charged with an opposite polarity.

This results in the entire energy being concentrated on the tip of the nozzle, also known as the meniscus tip, which is significantly smaller than the nozzle itself. Consequently, the size of the droplets is considerably reduced, increasing the resolution by a factor of ten.
Additionally, the viscosity of the materials that can be printed increases, which also positively impacts the resolution and expands the types of products that can be manufactured due to the greater material flexibility.