Commercial printing and the emerging functional printing applications require depositing and patterning a wide range of materials on a variety of substrates. Multiple layers are required with controlled interactions between each. Although there are similarities between these printing requirements and roll-to-roll coating on substrates, future printing applications involve many more substrates, a much wider range of materials and the need to utilize a variety of deposition techniques to produce the desired product. These factors drive the need to control a number of interfacial interactions including ink -substrate, ink -deposition device, interlayer, and print – air interfaces. The developed understanding of the chemistry and physics controlling these interactions directly translates to the invention of new materials and deposition systems to optimize system performance.

One of the more active research activities is controlling print adhesion and patterning. An aspect of this effort is wetting control, or the ability of a fluid (ink) to flow or spread on a substrate. The combination of surface energy measurement, computational fluidic modeling, materials design, and ink formulation can be used to optimize print resolution or feature size and to pattern fluid flow on a surface. Research efforts include the development of novel substrate coatings and ink additives to produce patterned hydrophobic/hydrophilic surfaces which dictate ink flow on the surface.