Mist Generation Behavior in Ultrasonic Atomizer for Aerosol Jet® Printing

Continuous ultrasonic atomization in a closed chamber is expected to generate a mist with an equilibrium droplet concentration and size distribution. Such a mist of microdroplets with controllable mist density has been used for Aerosol Jet® printing in the fabrication of a variety of additively manufactured microscale devices. Despite many unique capabilities demonstrated with the Aerosol Jet® printing technology, its ultrasonic atomization behavior appears to be rather sensitive to the ink properties with gaps in our understanding of the fundamental physics underlying its operation. In this work, we investigate some basic mechanisms in the Aerosol Jet® ultrasonic atomizer with a lumped-parameter kinetic coagulation model for highly concentrated mist. To mitigate the difficulty with unavailable knowledge about the complex turbulent flow inside the atomizer chamber, we present results for several orders of magnitude of the turbulent energy dissipation rates to examine a range of possibilities. The same approach is taken for analyzing the scavenging effect of the swirling bulk liquid. Our results also demonstrate the theoretical possibility for achieving a mist saturation condition where the mist output from the atomizer can become insensitive to process variables. As observed in experiments, such a saturated mist is highly desirable for Aerosol Jet® printing with maximized and well-controlled throughput in additive manufacturing.