New paper: Determination of dynamic viscosity for inkjet printing in pharmaceutics

The interest in using inkjet printing as manufacturing technology for personalized medicine has increased in recent years. The centrepiece of an inkjet printer is the print head.

For pharmaceutical approaches, various types of printing equipment were tested in the past and it was found that the choice of the printed geometry plays a subordinate role when printing the similar surface area. However, the composition of the inks, the process parameters as well as the size and functionality of the nozzles have a significant impact on the final printed quantity.

Additionally, the dynamic viscosity of inks represents a key parameter for the quality of the final printed product. Due to reported high shear forces up to 106 s−1 during the printing process (Croucher et al., 1989, https://doi.org/10.1021/ie00095a023), it is crucial to analyze the ink formulation at these shear rates.

A recent article of a group of scientists at the Heinrich Heine University, Institute of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics (Düsseldorf, Germany) – in cooperation with 3P Instruments – sheds new light on this topic. In this work, the dynamic viscosity was characterized at high shear rates with the method of optical microfluidics using the instrument “Fluidicam RHEO®”.

Comparative investigations on key factors and print head designs for pharmaceutical inkjet printing

Graphical abstract of the article

With this instrument, it is very easy to achieve shear rates up to 180,000 s-1 which is important to simulate printing processes and judge the printed quality. Furthermore, it is possible to choose the right setup regarding nozzle diameter and other parameters. The consumption of sample volume down to a few microliters is an additional key benefit of this method especially for the pharmaceutical industry.

Are you curious? Read the new article now:

Do you have questions or comments on the Fluidicam RHEO®? Contact us:

+49 8134 9324 0
 info@3P-instruments.com

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