Thermal transfer printing technology has been applied primary for ticket printing, label, PC' Peripherals and so on.However, the thermal transfer printer is capable of transferring wide variety inks on the ribbon directly onto the printing material. The foil gold/silver, opaque white and other functional ribbons are available for replacement of the ordinary flexo or gravure printing process in short-run applications. Also, the Retransfer Printing Process using Retransfer Sheet has started using for the printing on variety of hard materials such as such as CD and plastic card. The thermal transfer printing has entered the next generation of technical research for the expanding applications.
Yoshi Oyamada, Takara Ishiko, Hirotoshi Terao, "Expanding Applications on the Thermal Transfer Printing" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP19), 2003, pp 383 - 386, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2003.19.1.art00091_1