Olivetti employs world class engineers, material scientists, chemists and software designers to provide the best answers to customer needs, starting from silicon technology to ink-jet printing, and offering services from the initial design concept through product development to the final solution and printhead supply.
Olivetti strengths are its extensive knowledge of ink-jet technology, flexibility in addressing customer needs, full customisation potential to match ink formulations to printing systems, and its effective embodiment of a one-stop shop from technology to product.

Ink-Jet
From the late Seventies, Olivetti I-Jet became one of four companies worldwide credited with a proprietary thermal ink-jet technology. With the evolution of ink-jet technology, the company has developed a broad range of competencies in silicon technology (semiconductors and thin films), mechanics, electronics and chemistry, an extensive background on printing systems and colour science, and a deep knowledge of SW application development.
Together with its technical skills, Olivetti I-Jet has other strengths: flexible approach to new application development, advanced technological processes, private label turnkey product manufacturing, full product development process management and open working relationships with partners.
The company has three research centres in Ivrea, Arnad and Yverdon les Bain (CH), and a silicon foundry with the printhead production lines in Arnad; all sites are ISO 9001-Vision 2000 and ISO 14000 certified.

Mems
Over the years, progress in ink-jet technology has united specific skills in fields ranging from silicon technology (semiconductors and thin film) to microfluidics simulation, and from ink chemistry to micromachining techniques, to reach levels of excellence in printhead design and production.
The Olivetti ink-jet printhead is an example of a Micro Electro Mechanical System: miniaturised devices ranging in size from a few micrometres to a few millimetres, which execute one or more monitoring, processing or actuation functions by deploying a combination of electronic, mechanical, optical, chemical or biological components integrated on a silicon hybrid circuit. Microsystems are increasingly of importance because of their four major advantages: extremely small in size, use of small quantities of materials, low component consumption and production of large volumes inexpensively.

MEMS technologies have been used extensively for the fabrication of thermal ink jet printheads and also specially adapted to the specific needs of other MEMS devices for automotive and home appliance industries; it is also envisaged to cover new needs such as digital fabrication, bio-chips, material spotting, micro-dosing and printed electronics.

Silicon foundry
Olivetti I-Jet, thanks to huge investments made over the past years, offers an open silicon foundry to those Companies, Research Centres and Universities looking for time-focused, flexible developments and solutions.
The Olivetti I-Jet offer in the MEMS field ranges from providing single process phases to the complete wafer production cycle in line with customer requirements, from joint development of new micro-systems to new product designs. With its unique experience in micro-assembly, Olivetti I-Jet can also provide hybrid assemblies or custom-designed automatic assembly machines.

Currently the Olivetti I-Jet equipment, hosted on 25,000 m2 total floor space, 5,000 m2 of which is clean room with 2,000 m2 class 100, manages 6” wafer with an annual production capacity of over 100K slices. The in-house technologies available are Semiconductor and Thin Film, Micromachining, Microfluidics, Microassembly and Chemistry.