The material design concept for aqueous UV curable inkjet inks and quality of graphic output are explained. The UV fixing in inkjet printing has already been realized by several kinds of products. Almost all these printing systems are based on the piezo electric print head by non-aqueous UV inks and designed to print on non-absorbing substrates. The ink system of this article is characterized as composition of water-soluble photo-initiator and water-soluble oligomers in aqueous pigment dispersions. The objectives of the system are to adopt the bubble & thermal inkjet system and to print mainly on absorbing substrates. How we design the water-soluble materials and design parameters are discussed. How we can control and realize the quality of graphic output by pigmented inks is also presented. Although the aqueous based system has disadvantage on curing speed; it will enable us to realize printer which is more environmental and also to create a graphic output close to current commercial printing.
Hiromichi Noguchi, Masako Shimomura, "An Aqueous UV Curable Inkjet Printing for Graphic Output" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP17), 2001, pp 332 - 335, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2001.17.1.art00073_1