1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejection head such as an ink jet recording head and a liquid ejection apparatus having the same, and more specifically to a liquid ejection head including a nozzle forming member having a plurality of nozzles that are arranged in rows, a pressure generating unit having a pressure generating section that generates pressure changes in a pressure chamber, a communication member in which a liquid chamber cavity that serves as part of a common liquid chamber and a supply communication path that communicates the liquid chamber cavity with the pressure chamber are formed, and a case member which is fixedly attached to the communication member on which the nozzle forming member and the pressure generating unit are bonded, and a liquid ejection apparatus having the same.
2. Related Art
Liquid ejection apparatuses generally have a liquid ejection head and eject various liquid from the ejection head. Such liquid ejection apparatuses include, for example, image recording apparatuses such as an ink jet printer and an ink jet plotter. Recently, liquid ejection apparatuses are applied to a variety of manufacturing apparatuses, taking advantage of their capability of precisely ejecting an extremely small amount of liquid onto a target position. For example, liquid ejection apparatuses are applied to display manufacturing apparatuses for manufacturing color filters for liquid crystal displays, electrode manufacturing apparatuses for manufacturing electrodes of organic electroluminescence (EL) displays or field emission displays (FEDs), and chip manufacturing apparatuses for manufacturing biochips. The recording head for image recording apparatuses ejects ink in a liquid form, and the color material ejection head for display manufacturing apparatuses ejects the respective color material solution of R (red), G (green) and B (blue). Further, the electrode material ejection head for electrode manufacturing apparatuses ejects an electrode material in a liquid form, and the bio-organic material ejection head for chip manufacturing apparatuses ejects a bio-organic solution.
JP-A-2005-219243 discloses an example of liquid ejection head of the above-mentioned type, which includes a nozzle plate having a plurality of nozzles, a flow path forming substrate in which an individual flow path having pressure chambers that communicate with the respective nozzles and a cavity that serves as part of a common liquid chamber (also referred to as a reservoir or manifold) for storing liquid commonly used for the respective pressure chambers are formed, a plurality of piezoelectric elements (a type of pressure generating section) that correspond to the respective pressure chambers, and a common liquid chamber forming substrate in which a common liquid chamber cavity that serves as a common liquid chamber for storing liquid commonly used for the respective pressure chambers is formed.
In the above-mentioned flow path forming substrate, a configuration is also proposed in which the cavity that serves as part of a common liquid chamber is not provided, thereby reducing the size of the flow path forming substrate. FIGS. 7A and 7B are schematic views which show an example of a configuration in which the flow path forming substrate is downsized. FIG. 7A is an essential sectional view, and FIG. 7B is an essential plan view. The direction perpendicular to the sheet of FIG. 7A is a nozzle row direction, and the up-down direction in FIG. 7B is the nozzle row direction. In this example, reference numeral 55 denotes a flow path forming substrate in which a pressure chamber 56 is formed, reference numeral 57 denotes a nozzle plate having a nozzle 58, reference numeral 59 denotes a communication substrate in which a nozzle communication path 60 that communicate the pressure chamber 56 with the nozzle 58 is formed, and reference numeral 64 denotes an actuator unit having a piezoelectric element 62. Those components are stacked to form a head body 54.
In the above configuration, for example, in the case where a plurality of common liquid chambers 61 are independently provided, that is, one common liquid chamber that corresponds to one nozzle row is divided into a plurality of common liquid chambers 61, the adjacent common liquid chambers 61 are separated by a section wall 66 and the side end face of the section wall 66 needs to be bonded to the side face of the head body 54 by using an adhesive (an area X shown in FIG. 7B). However, this has a problem in that ink in the adjacent common liquid chambers 61 is leaked out from the connection portion.