Synthetic silica, the traditional matte ink jet paper coating pigment, cannot be coated at commercial speeds without significant sacrifices in operating efficiency. Commercial results with a new surface-enhanced aluminosilicate (SEAS) pigment provide a viable alternative to silica in ink jet coating formulations, especially with metering size press (MSP) methods. The SEAS pigment has sufficient porosity to dry ink jet inks rapidly, so it allows coatings to resist lateral ink spread (or whiskering) and strike through.Optimized SEAS-based coatings generally need less binder and other costly ingredients than silica-based coating formulations. A trial with an optimized SEAS-based formulation on a commercial MSP papermachine at 1050 m/min. produced over 100 tons of C1S matte ink jet paper. This paper compared favorably in sheet and print properties to commercial paper commonly used in ink jet printers, i.e., a silica-based coated grade and an uncoated, multipurpose grade.
Michael G. Londo, "Surface Enhanced Alumino-Silicates as an Alternative to Synthetic Silicas in Inkjet Receptor Coatings" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP16), 2000, pp 193 - 197, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2000.16.1.art00052_1