Non-impact printhead and driver circuit for use therewith

A printhead comprising:

• a plurality of recording elements energizable for emitting radiation used in recording;
• driver circuitry means including a plurality of master-slave current mirrors for generating driving currents to energize respective recording elements, each of said recording elements being a part of a slave leg of a respective one of said current mirrors and having a master circuit of each of the current mirrors in current driving relationship with only one of said recording elements;
• and wherein the driver circuitry further includes a plurality of MOS transistors arranged as a cascode current mirror and biased in a weak-inversion saturated region to generate a first current with a generally linear temperature profile and said plurality of current mirrors are responsive to said first current for generating the driving currents.

A printhead comprising:

• a recording element energizable for emitting radiation used in recording, and
• driver circuitry for providing driving current to energize the recording element;
• the driver circuitry including a digital-to-analog converter for modifying a level of current to the recording element, the converter including a plurality of unit transistors arranged in a common centroid configuration to define a centroid, wherein the unit transistors of the converter are connected in groups to form binary weighted transistor groups, and wherein ones of the binary weighted groups of progressively higher binary weight are located progressively farther from the centroid.

A driver circuitry for providing driving current to energize a recording element, the driver circuitry comprising:

• a plurality of MOS transistors arranged in a cascode, current mirror configuration and biased in a weak-inversion saturated region to generate the driving current with a generally linear temperature profile.

A driver circuitry for providing driving currents to energize a plurality of recording elements, the driver circuitry comprising:

• a plurality of master-slave current mirror means for generating driving currents to energize respective recording elements, each current mirror means including a transistor for driving a respective one of said recording elements and forming a part of a respective slave leg of each current mirror means and each current mirror means including a respective master circuit that is in master-slave relationship with said respective slave leg so that the master circuit is associated with only one recording element;
• and wherein the driver circuitry further includes a plurality of MOS transistors arranged as a cascode current mirror and biased in a weak-inversion saturated region to generate a first current with a generally linear temperature profile and said plurality of current mirror means are responsive to said first current for generating the driving currents.

A driver circuitry for providing driving current to energize a recording element;

• the driver circuitry comprising:
• a digital to-analog converter for modifying a level of current to the recording element, the converter including a plurality of unit transistors arranged in a common centroid configuration to define a centroid, wherein the unit transistors of the converter are connected in groups to form binary weighted transistor groups, and wherein ones of the binary weighted groups of progressively higher binary weight are located progressively farther from the centroid.