1. Field
Example embodiments of the present invention relate to a nozzle plate including a protrusion type nozzle and a method of fabricating the nozzle plate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Inkjet printing involves ejecting fine droplets of ink onto a printing medium using nozzles formed in a nozzle plate. Inkjet printing may be used to print a predetermined image by ejecting the fine droplets onto desired portions of the printing medium.
Inkjet printing technology may be applied in various fields of printable electronics, biotechnology, and bioscience, as well as in the image printing field. For example, a flexible substrate, besides a glass substrate, may be used to fabricate electronic circuits, and thus, the inkjet printing technology may be applied in the field of flexible display apparatuses. According to inkjet printing, a pattern may be formed by just one process, and thus, processing costs may be lower than that of a conventional photolithography process.
Inkjet printing technology may be classified into thermal type printing technology and piezoelectric type printing technology. In the thermal type printing technology, bubbles may be generated using a heat source and droplets may be ejected using an expansion property of the bubbles. The piezoelectric type printing technology ejects the droplets using a transformation of piezoelectric material.
Electro-hydrodynamic type printing technology ejects droplets of ink by using an electrostatic force. The electro-hydrodynamic type printing technology has an advantage that a volume of an ejected droplet may be greatly reduced when compared with the conventional thermal type and the conventional piezoelectric type printing technologies.