Patent ID: 8322840

Claim:
A pattern formation method comprising the steps of: dropping curable ink linearly onto a substrate; curing the ink dropped onto the substrate; and depositing layers of ink to form a linear pattern by repeating a process of linearly dropping a predetermined amount of ink onto the cured ink and a process of curing the predetermined amount of ink, wherein in the step of depositing layers of ink, the ink is dropped at dot pitch p that satisfies p min ≦p when the ink is dropped at dot pitch p, and a minimum dot pitch for preventing the dropped ink from spreading beyond cured landing-position ink that is located at a landing position of the dropped ink is p min , wherein the minimum dot pitch p min is determined based on the predetermined amount of ink and the area of a cross section of a pattern formed by the dropped ink, and when a contact angle between the dropped ink and the landing-position ink is θ n , a contact angle between the landing-position ink and an object on which the landing-position ink has landed is θ n-1 , an angle between a tangent line to the surface of the landing-position ink and a plane parallel to the surface of the substrate at a point of contact between the surface of the dropped ink and the landing-position ink is φ n-1 , an angle between a tangent line to the surface of an object and a plane parallel to the surface of the substrate at a point of contact between the landing-position ink and the object on which the landing-position ink has landed is φ n-2 , and the area of the cross section is S n , the area S n of the cross section is calculated by the following formula: S n = [ ( ϕ n - 1 + θ n ) ⁢ d n 2 ⁢ sin ⁡ ( ϕ n - 1 + θ n ) - { ( ϕ n - 2 + θ n - 1 ) ⁢ d n - 1 2 ⁢ sin ⁡ ( ϕ n - 2 + θ n - 1 ) - d n 4 ⁢ ( d n - 1 tan ⁡ ( ϕ n - 2 + θ n - 1 ) - d n tan ⁡ ( ϕ n - 1 + θ n ) ) } ] .