Today, fotolike glossy inkjet papers are produced according to different production methods. One method has been derived from silver halide foto paper technology and uses PE layers to achieve the high gloss. The other one is based on the cast coating process, which produces high gloss by pressing the water based coating color on to an extremely smooth chromium drum.At the beginning of the development of glossy inkjet papers these products have been the smooth base for an additional overcoat, which introduced the inkjet capability.Later on, the inkjet suitability was transfered directly into the cast coating layer, so that the additional layer becomes obsolete. This allowed for having a porous and glossy surface and the ink uptake can be managed by porosity and not by the time consuming swelling of a polymer.For now, this technology is successfully applied and easily competes with the other production methods. But does it have the potential to compete also in the future?Cast coated products are usually associated with very high gloss. But in reality cast coating produces extremely high smoothness, gloss being developed for free. Having realised this fact, it is possible to produce a paper with extraordinary smoothness but matt appearance in addition to the glossy version.
Gerd Papier, Andre Becker, Olaf Friederichs, "The Future Potential of the Cast Coating Process" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP17), 2001, pp 133 - 136, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2001.17.1.art00026_1