Jetting, Coating, and Drying: Integrated Development for Advanced Material Printing

Jetting, coating, and drying are key processes in advanced manufacturing and material printing, each of which plays a crucial role in precision applications. This study integrates insights from electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jetting and gas dynamic virtual nozzles (GDVN) to optimize droplet control, highlighting the challenges posed by surface tension in EHD jetting and the effects of shear-thinning and elasticity in GDVN-based jetting. These findings provide valuable scaling laws for controlling jet diameter, droplet generation frequency, and intact jet length in functional material printing. In coating, we introduce a novel approach using physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) to predict optimal operating conditions for blade coating, significantly improving process stability and performance prediction compared to traditional methods. Additionally, we explore the drying dynamics of colloidal solutions through numerical simulations and experimental investigations, revealing new mechanisms such as diffusiophoresis, which governs particle assembly within evaporating droplets. This offers an alternative to traditional capillary and Marangoni flows and enhances control over particle transport in drying films. By combining these insights, we offer a comprehensive understanding of jetting, coating, and drying phenomena, paving the way for more precise and efficient fabrication techniques in printed electronics, biomaterials, and functional coatings. 

Dr. Jinkee Lee received his BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1997 and 1999, respectively. He earned his PhD in Engineering from Brown University in 2008, where he was awarded the prestigious Simon Ostrach Fellowship. Following his doctoral studies, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University from 2008 to 2009, working jointly in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He then returned to Brown University as an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering from 2009 to 2011. In 2012, Dr. Lee joined Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), where he is currently a Full Professor and the Director of the Microfluidic Convergence Laboratory in the School of Mechanical Engineering and Institute of Quantum Biophysics. His research interests include interfacial flow and transport phenomena, AI-powered fluid control, and their applications such as printed electronics and ultra-small-scale fluid manipulation for synthetic biology. Dr. Lee is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Namheon Research Excellence Award (2025) — the highest honor in fluid mechanics from the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers (KSME) — the KSV Academic Award (2022), the KSME Kasan Research Excellence Award (2020), and the SKKU Presidential Teaching Award (2016).