Liquids microprinting through laser-induced forward transfer

Laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) is a direct-writing technique which allows the deposition of tiny amounts of material from a donor thin film onto a receptor substrate. When LIFT is applied to liquid donor films, the laser radiation affects only a localized fraction of the liquid, thereby impelling the unaffected portion towards the receptor substrate. Thus, transfer takes place with no melting or vaporization of the deposited fraction and, in this way, LIFT can be used to successfully print complex materials like inorganic inks and pastes, biomolecules in solution, and even living cells and microorganisms. In addition, and for a wide range of liquid rheologies, the material can be deposited in the form of circular microdroplets; this provides LIFT with a high degree of spatial resolution leading to feature sizes below 10 μm, and making it competitive in front of conventional printing techniques. In this work, a revision of the main achievements of the LIFT of liquids is carried out, correlating the morphological characteristics of the generated features with the results of the study of the transfer process. Special emphasis is put on the characterization of the dynamics of liquid ejection, which has provided valuable information for the understanding of microdroplets deposition. Thus, new time-resolved imaging analyses have shown a material release behavior which contrasts with most of the previously made assumptions, and that allows clarifying some of the questions open during the study of the LIFT technique.