Inkjet printing has attracted wide attention due to the important applications in fabricating biological, optical, and electrical devices. During the inkjet printing process, the solutes prefer to deposit along the droplet periphery and form an inhomogeneous morphology, known as the coffee-ring effect. Besides, the feature size of printed dots or lines of conventional inkjet printing is usually limited to tens or even hundreds of micrometers. The above two issues greatly restrict the extensive application of printed patterns in high-performance devices. This paper reviews the recent advances in precisely controlling the printing droplets for high-resolution patterns and three-dimensional structures, with a focus on the development to suppress the coffee-ring effect and minimize the feature size of printed dots or lines. A perspective on the remaining challenges of the research is also proposed.

The preparation of fi ne 3D microstructures is an attractive issue; however, it is limited at large-area fabrication process and fi neness morphology manipulation. Here, we propose a strategy to fabricate controllable 3D structures and morphologies from one single droplet via ink-jet printing. Based on the surface energy difference between the hydrophilic patterns and hydrophobic surface, the three phase contact line of a droplet contained nanoparticles is forced to pin on the patterned hydrophilic points and asymmetrically dewets on the hydrophobic surface, which leads to various morphologies. Through the regulation of pinning patterns and solution properties, the 3D morphology can be well manipulated. This strategy to control the 3D morphology of nanoparticle assembly based on hydrophilic patterns would be of great importance for fabricating controllable 3D structures.