JPH1016277A - Method of forming holes in recording head - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To form a hole on a recording head at a predetermined position without displacement at the time of the hole formation by forming the hole by radiating a laser light beam to an area between an electrode portion and a mask portion adjacent to each other on an insulating substrate from one surface side. SOLUTION: On one side surface of an insulating sheet 110 comprising a 25 to 100μm thickness polyimide resin as an insulating substrate, a 1 to 15μm thickness copper foil is formed uniformly by a deposition method. By an etching method, a mask pattern 120 as a mask portion and a control electrode 130 as an electrode portion, which serves as a laser processing mask pattern and an electrically effective pattern, are formed. A slit mask as an optical path regulating member, formed by forming a rectangular slit opening in an extremely thin stainless steel plate, is superimposed on the mask pattern 120 and the control electrode 130 on the insulating sheet 110 and irradiated with an excimer laser beam. Accordingly, a hole can be formed at a predetermined position without positioning.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a recording head for recording an image by controlling the flow of charged particles. The present invention relates to a method for forming a hole in a recording head, which forms a hole through which particles pass.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, as an image forming apparatus mainly used in copying machines, printers, facsimile machines, etc., a conductive foil pattern having an opening is formed on an insulating substrate, holes are formed in the opening, and a conductive foil pattern is formed. Using a recording head configured by connecting driving elements such as ICs, applying a voltage to the conductive foil pattern from the driving elements to form an electrostatic field inside the hole, and switching the direction and magnitude of this electrostatic field For example, JP-A-2-297570 and JP-A-6-79907 disclose a method in which charged particles are selectively passed through holes and adhered to a support.

[0003] As a method of forming the above-mentioned hole,
A processing method using a laser beam is often used. For example, a hole 44 shown in FIG.
When the row of 0s is formed on the insulating sheet 410 as an insulating substrate, a contact mask 510 having a mask opening 540 as shown in FIG.
And a mask having the same shape as that shown in FIG. 5 is inserted into the laser beam path, or a contact mask method for forming a hole in the insulating sheet 410 at a position corresponding to the mask opening 540.
A so-called mask imaging method or the like has been used in which the irradiation laser light itself is previously formed into a shape corresponding to the arrangement of holes to be formed, and holes are formed without a contact mask.

[0004]

However, when pre-processing such as antistatic processing or protective coating is performed prior to drilling, for example, heat treatment is often involved, which causes thermal deformation of the insulating substrate, resulting in thermal deformation of the insulating substrate. Contact mask 510 shown in FIG.
Has a problem that the mask opening 540 of FIG.

As a result, the mask opening 540 is moved to the control electrode 4
In the area where the mask opening 30 overlaps, a part of the mask opening 540 is further shielded by the control electrode 430, and the area of the mask opening is substantially reduced, so that the hole 440 formed there is smaller than the desired size. The recording density decreases because the flow rate of charged particles decreases.

The mask opening 540 and the control electrode 430
In a place apart from each other without overlapping, the hole 440 formed there is separated from the control electrode 430, and the strength of the electrostatic field formed in the hole 440 when a voltage is applied to the control electrode 430 becomes weaker. There is a problem that the contrast of recording deteriorates.

[0007] Even when the pretreatment including heating as described above is not performed, deformation occurs in both the insulating substrate and the contact mask due to the heat generated when the insulating substrate is drilled by laser light irradiation. Due to the difference between the coefficients of thermal expansion of the two, the above-described positional deviation has also occurred, which has had a great effect on the image recording characteristics.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-mentioned problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a recording head formed by laser processing using a mask pattern, capable of forming holes at predetermined positions without misalignment during hole processing. It is intended to provide a method for forming holes.

[0009]

In order to achieve this object, a method of forming a hole in a recording head according to the first aspect of the present invention comprises forming at least one metal foil on one surface of an insulating substrate. A plurality of electrode units for controlling the flow of charged particles are arranged at least in a row at a predetermined interval, and a mask unit made of at least a metal foil is provided between two adjacent electrode units. It is arranged so as not to be directly connected, and a region between the electrode portion and the mask portion adjacent to the insulating substrate is irradiated with laser light from the one surface side to form holes. I have.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the method of forming a hole in a recording head, the mask portion is peeled off from the insulating substrate after irradiating a laser beam. That is, after forming the electrode portion and the mask portion on one surface of the insulating substrate, a hole is formed by irradiating a laser beam from the one surface side, and then the mask portion is insulated. Peels off from the conductive substrate.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the method of forming a hole in a recording head, an optical path regulating member having a slit-shaped opening is provided in a laser optical path on the insulating substrate before reaching the electrode section and the mask section. It is characterized in that a laser beam is applied to an area between the electrode section and the mask section adjacent to the insulating substrate through the opening of the optical path regulating member. That is, the electrode portion and the mask portion are formed on one surface of the insulating substrate, and further, a slit is formed in a laser light path before reaching the electrode portion and the mask portion on the insulating substrate. Arrange an optical path regulating member having an opening of a shape, in a region between the electrode portion and the mask portion adjacent to the insulating substrate, a laser beam through the opening of the optical path regulating member, from the one surface side Irradiate to form holes.

[0012]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

An outline of a method of forming holes in a recording head according to the present embodiment will be described with reference to FIGS.

The insulating sheet 110 serving as an insulating substrate is made of a polyimide resin having a thickness of 25 to 100 μm.
μm copper foil is uniformly formed by a method such as vapor deposition, sputtering, plating, bonding, and the like, and then, by an etching method, a mask pattern 120 as a mask portion;
A control electrode 130 is formed as an electrode part that also serves as a laser processing mask pattern and an electrically effective pattern.

Then, as shown in FIG. 2, a slit mask 210 as an optical path regulating member having a rectangular slit opening 240 formed in an ultra-thin stainless steel plate is connected to the mask pattern 120 formed on the insulating sheet 110. The hole 140 shown in FIG. 1 can be formed by overlapping the control electrode 130 from above and irradiating the excimer laser uniformly from above. The laser beam may be applied to a range sufficiently wider than the slit opening 240, so that complicated alignment is not required, and a hole can be formed at a predetermined position by a simple method.

Further, the laser beam is emitted from the slit opening 2.
A beam having a wide range of beam shapes that can irradiate the whole 40 at one time may be irradiated without scanning, or a circle, an ellipse, a rectangle, etc., larger than a square having a rectangular short side of the slit opening 240 as one side. A beam of any shape may be scanned in the direction of the long side of the rectangular shape of the slit opening 240.

By the way, at the time of drilling by the above-mentioned excimer laser, conductive deposits such as carbon are usually attached to the inner wall surface of the hole 140, and in the state of FIG. The adjacent control electrodes 130 can be electrically connected to each other via the mask pattern 120, and it is impossible to apply different voltages to the adjacent control electrodes 130. Therefore, it is impossible to record an image as it is. . Therefore, after this, the mask pattern 1
By peeling off 20, all the control electrodes 130 are insulated from each other, and image recording becomes possible.

As a method of allowing the mask pattern 120 to be peeled off, for example, by utilizing the property that the fine pattern is easily peeled off when the etching time or the concentration of the processing solution is increased, the mask pattern 120 can be peeled off more than the control electrode 130. If the mask pattern 120 is formed with a thin pattern, the mask pattern 120 that can be easily peeled can be formed.

Further, for example, the mask pattern 120
And, the control electrode 130 is formed on the insulating sheet 110 by screen printing of copper paste, and after forming the holes, gold plating is performed while applying current only to the control electrode 130,
Thereafter, the mask pattern 12 is formed with a solvent of the copper paste.
A method such as washing away 0 can be used. Note that a silver paste may be used instead of the copper paste.

In this manner, the recording head 4 having the same size rows of holes 440 on both sides of the control electrode 430 as shown in FIG. 4 can be manufactured.

Here, an outline of image recording using the recording head 4 shown in FIG. 4 will be described.

When a voltage is applied to the control electrode 430, the holes 4
An electrostatic field is generated in the hole 40, and depending on the direction and magnitude of the electrostatic field, holes 44 of charged particles such as charged toner and ions are formed.
0 is controlled, and charged particles are caused to fly to predetermined positions on the surface of an image recording medium or the like, thereby performing image recording.

At this time, in the recording head 4 as shown in FIG. 4, the control electrode 43 corresponding to one hole 440
Since there is only one 0, there is little crosstalk due to electric field interference between the adjacent control electrodes 430, and high-resolution image recording becomes possible.

The present invention is not limited to the embodiment described above, and various changes can be made without departing from the gist of the present invention.

For example, in the above-described embodiment, the slit mask 210 is used in contact with the insulating sheet 110. However, it is not necessary to make contact with the slit mask 210, a gap may be provided, and the slit mask 210 may be provided on the laser light source side. The same processing can be performed by inserting a mask having a shape, shaping the beam into a rectangular shape, and then irradiating the rectangular laser beam.

In the above embodiment, the mask pattern was peeled off after the hole processing, but the condition was such that conductive deposits such as carbon did not adhere to the inner wall surface of the hole, for example, under reduced pressure or inert gas. If processing is performed in an atmosphere, or if conductive deposits adhered by a solvent or wet blasting are removed, it is not always necessary to peel off, but the process becomes complicated and the manufacturing cost increases.

In this case, like the recording head 3 shown in FIG.
May be formed to the minimum necessary size. In this case, the step of removing the mask pattern 320 can be omitted,
Productivity is improved. Further, since the mask pattern 320, which is a conductive pattern, exists between the adjacent holes 340, crosstalk due to electric field interference between the adjacent control electrodes 330 can be prevented, and the edge of the recording dot or line can be prevented. However, clear and high-resolution image recording becomes possible.
Further, all the mask patterns 320 may be electrically connected, and may be grounded in the configuration shown in FIG.

The gist of the present invention resides in that a mask pattern is previously provided on an insulating substrate in order to eliminate a positional deviation at the time of drilling a hole. Either method has a great effect.

[0029]

As is apparent from the above description, the method for forming a hole in a recording head according to the first aspect of the present invention comprises at least one metal foil on one surface of an insulating substrate, and A plurality of electrode portions for controlling the flow of particles are arranged at least in a row at a predetermined interval, and a mask portion made of at least a metal foil is provided between two adjacent electrode portions. It is arranged so as not to be directly connected, and a region between the electrode portion and the mask portion adjacent to the insulating substrate is irradiated with laser light from the one surface side to form holes, thereby forming a hole on the workpiece. Irrespective of the thermal history and the difference in the coefficient of thermal expansion between the mask portion and the insulating substrate, it is possible to accurately form holes at predetermined positions. Also, since there is only one electrode portion corresponding to one hole, there is no crosstalk due to electric field interference between adjacent electrode portions,
A recording head capable of recording a high-resolution image can be manufactured.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the method of forming a hole in a recording head, the mask portion is peeled off from the insulating substrate after irradiating a laser beam, so that conductive deposits such as carbon on the inner wall surface of the hole are removed. It is not necessary to perform the process under special processing conditions such that the conductive deposit does not adhere, and the insulation between the electrode portions can be secured by a very simple process, and the manufacturing cost can be reduced.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the recording head hole forming method, an optical path regulating member having a slit-shaped opening is provided in the laser optical path on the insulating substrate before reaching the electrode section and the mask section. The laser light is radiated through the opening of the optical path regulating member to a region between the electrode portion and the mask portion which are arranged and adjacent to the insulating substrate, so that complicated positioning is not required, and a simple method. Thus, a hole can be formed at a predetermined position.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram schematically illustrating a process of forming holes in a recording head according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a view schematically showing a slit mask used in the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating a hole forming process of a recording head according to another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of a recording head that records an image by controlling the flow of charged particles.

FIG. 5 is a view showing a conventional contact mask for laser hole processing.

[Explanation of symbols]

 3, 4 Recording head 110, 310, 410 Insulating sheet 120, 320 Mask pattern 130, 330, 430 Control electrode 140, 340, 440 hole 210 Slit mask 240 Slit opening

Claims (3)

[Claims] In order to produce a recording head for recording an image by controlling the flow of charged particles, an insulating substrate is irradiated with laser light, and a hole through which the charged particles pass is provided at a predetermined position. In the method of forming a hole in a recording head to be formed, on one surface of the insulating substrate, at least a plurality of electrode portions for controlling the flow of the charged particles, which are formed of at least a metal foil, are provided at a predetermined interval. While being arranged in a line, a mask portion made of at least a metal foil is arranged between two adjacent electrode portions so as not to be directly connected to the electrode portion, and is arranged adjacent to the electrode portion adjacent to the insulating substrate. A hole forming method for a recording head, wherein a hole is formed by irradiating a laser beam from the one surface side to a region between the mask portion and the mask portion. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the mask portion is peeled off from the insulating substrate after the laser beam irradiation.
3. The method for forming a hole in a recording head according to item 1. 3. An optical path regulating member having a slit-shaped opening is disposed in a laser light path on the insulating substrate before reaching the electrode section and the mask section, and the electrode adjacent to the insulating substrate is provided. 3. The method according to claim 1, wherein a laser beam is applied to an area between the portion and the mask portion through an opening of the optical path regulating member. 4.