Patent ID: 8827400

Claim:
A liquid application apparatus, comprising: a head including a plurality of nozzles which eject droplets of liquid having functional properties toward a substrate; a relative movement device which causes the head and the substrate to move relatively to each other in a relative movement direction; a droplet ejection control device which operates the head at a prescribed droplet ejection period so as to deposit the droplets discretely onto the substrate; an x-direction droplet deposition pitch changing device which changes a deposition pitch of the droplets on the substrate in an x direction perpendicular to the relative movement direction; and a y-direction droplet deposition pitch changing device which changes a deposition pitch of the droplets on the substrate in a y direction parallel to the relative movement direction, wherein: the nozzles are arranged in one of a first matrix and a second matrix on the head, the first matrix comprises rows which are parallel to the x direction and columns which are oblique to the y direction, the second matrix comprises rows which are oblique to the x direction and columns which are oblique to the y direction and nonparallel to the rows, and the nozzles arranged in the one of the first matrix and the second matrix have a projected nozzle pitch which is a pitch of the nozzles assumed to be projected to align in the x direction; the droplet ejection control device operates the head at a period of at least m times a minimum droplet ejection period so as to deposit the droplets discretely on the substrate, where m is an integer larger than 1; the droplet ejection control device also serves as the x-direction droplet deposition pitch changing device that switches the nozzles to eject the droplets so as to change the deposition pitch of the droplets on the substrate in the x direction in units of n times the projected nozzle pitch, where n is a positive integer; and the droplet ejection control device also serves as the y-direction droplet deposition pitch changing device that includes a delay time generation device which generates, with the minimum droplet ejection period as a minimum unit, a delay time of not shorter than the minimum droplet ejection period and not longer than (m−1) times the minimum droplet ejection period, and delays a drive timing of the head by using the delay time generated by the delay time generation device to change the deposition pitch of the droplets on the substrate in the y direction in units of the minimum droplet ejection period.