(616g) Electrodeless Electro-Hydrodynamic Printing of Personalized Medicines

The authors propose a method appropriate for the drop-on-demand printing of personalized medicines. To eliminate adverse effects of electrochemical reactions at the fluid-electrode interface, the fluid infused into an electrically insulating nozzle to form a pendant drop serves as a floating electrode capacitively coupled to external electrodes. A short voltage pulse is applied to the electrodes to stretch the drop into a liquid bridge that will then break up creating a sessile drop on the substrate. This gentle method for drop deposition has been demonstrated to operate with fluids spanning over three orders of magnitude in viscosity and conductivity. Surprisingly, the formation of a cone-like drop profile was observed to depend not only on the magnitude of electric stress, as assumed by current theories for a Taylor cone, but also on the rate of stress increase. This gentle method for drop deposition has been demonstrated to operate with fluids spanning over three orders of magnitude in viscosity and conductivity.

This work was supported by NSF Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Particulate Systems.