Dear Benedict, we have used an (old) inkjet printer in the past to directly print solar cell absorbers, and it turned out that the thickness in real space is about 100-120 nm per print cycle. This implies that you may add additional material on the print if you are able to print repeatedly on the same object. With some smaller modifications of an old inkjet printer, we were able to use solid substrates to repeat the printing cycles for 15 times or more. However, the prepared layers clearly show the individual droplets of the printer, an example is given as attachment, showing that the size is not uniform at all - this can be related to the fact that our ink is not perfect, because we mixed the absorber material to a hexane/hexanethiol solvent that may bung the nozzles of the printhead. So an old printer model is not ideal for doing this in practise.

I would recommend that you use a professional print using a lithographic printer - we have prepared well defined slit systems for slit systems used for the diffraction of laser light, and they work very well!

So good luck for your efforts, kind regards, Dirk

Dear Dirk, 

thank you very much for your detailed information! I took this into account and started to print several patterns on plastic sheets. The inkjet print was not any homogenous as you've mentioned. Many little droplets which haven't even dried out after waiting more than a day..

I was thinking about exchanging the ink by a binder/solution/glue or anything, so that I'm applying some kind of 3D-print to the foil. Not sure if the nozzles hole is large enough to let the fluid come out? I haven't seen any articles in the web where they have exchanged the ink - other than the bioprinter approach: http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-BioPrinter/ 

How about taking acceton into the cartdridge, hoping that it won't destroy the tank and print some structures on the foil. Maybe I can get a relief/3D surface structure? I'm hardly familiar with chemics though..

Another approach: Getting UV-resin/glue or photopolymere. Place a droplet on glass, print a "mask" with a high-resolution printer. Put the mask right under the glass and illuminate it with an UV-lightsource (laser/LED). After a while I'll get 3D structures, won't I ? 

My idea is to create a phase mask for a microscope objective. In Zernikes phasecontrast microscopy a phasering retards a certain amount of light so that it can constructively interfere with light which gets diffracted by phaseobjects - this makes the invisible phase of an object visible. Actually I don't need this ring - any random formation works. But: It has to be a pi/2 phase-step (eg. at 546nm).