This presentation will describe how two nano-structured inorganic material classes which are produced by flame processes have been crucial to the technical evolution of the toner industry during the past two decades: fumed metal oxides as external additives and carbon black as the essential pigment. Market forces driving this evolution and increasing additive diversity are the demand for high speed office printers and commercial digital presses and the need for low priced laser printers to make small office and home (SOHO) use affordable. Additionally, ecofriendly printers with reduced energy consumption and zero emissions require the development of toner with low fusing temperatures (low T_g) based on environmentally safe raw materials. Novel fumed silicon/titanium mixed oxides offer the positive tribo-charging benefits of titanium dioxide combined with the surface properties of silica. Acting as effective spacers that prevent re-agglomeration of low T_g toner, fumed sub-micron particles based on both silica and titania have distinct advantages over precipitated and sol-gel-derived materials, respectively. These include; low moisture, high purity, and the complete absence of internal porosity. For improved dispersibility and optimized toner surface coverage, de-agglomerated, chemical and mechanical structure-modified fumed metal oxides have been developed and will be discussed. Lastly, the paper will explore the impact of the ongoing EH&S (environmental, health & safety) discussion on external additives, carbon black and development trends toward safe external additives.

Computation of quality from digital photographic images has been widely studied whereas research on quality computation from printed natural images has been scarce to date. This study was motivated by needs to develop characterization of the quality potential of paper for digital printing by electrophotography and ink-jet employing subjectively meaningful objective methods. The goal was to find whether commonly used algorithms of blur, noise, contrast and colorfulness are feasible for quality characterization within the range of variation originating from paper and to evaluate whether the performance of paper grades is dependent on image content type. According to the results, image content is highly important and the applicability of the algorithms is complicated by the role of noise in prints.

Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine has emerged as an innovative scientific field that focuses on development of new approaches for repairing cells, tissues and organs. While the current paradigm of utilizing combinations of biomaterial scaffolds and cells for tissue construction has shown to be effective, only a limited number of these technologies have been successfully translated to patients. This is due to various issues that are encountered in the tissue building process. Recent development of novel biomaterials, the discovery of new sources of cells, and advances in scaffold fabrication strategies are being applied to address these challenges. One of the challenges that hinder clinical translation is the inefficiency of current cell delivery methods. Living tissues maintain inherent multi-cellular heterogeneous structures, and rebuilding of such complex structures requires subtle arrangements of different cell types and extracellular matrix components at specific anatomical target sites. Inkjet printing technology has been proposed as a tool to address cell delivery concerns. In this session, this versatile method of building complex tissue structures will be discussed.

We introduce a new banding analysis system which contains a banding measurement tool and a spatial-visualization tool. The banding measurement tool is based on image analysis to measure color banding exhibited by color laser printers. The tool analyzes a specially designed test page and provides the principal banding frequency components from both the primary and secondary colorant planes. On the other hand, the spatial-visualization tool is intended to help the users better understand from a qualitative perspective the appearance of the color banding on their printed test pages. The overall banding analysis system is very useful for engineers in printer industry to investigate banding in color laser printers throughout all stages of the printer development life cycle.

This paper provides an overview of the recent progress of simulation technology in Japan for the development of electrophotography processes—charging, exposure, development, transfer, fusing, cleaning, and paper handling. By utilizing highly efficient hardware and software, the simulation technology has been improved significantly. Because charging, exposure, and fusing processes are based on the mechanics of continuous media, they are formulated as a set of multi-component, nonstationary, and nonlinear partial differential equations and are numerically solved by the iterative finite element method or finite differential method. In contrast, the discrete element method is used to simulate the dynamics of toner and/or carrier particles in the development, transfer, and cleaning processes. The method of direct observation with a high-speed microscope camera and particle tracking velocimetry are used to improve physical models and to confirm the adequacy of calculation results. Thus, the electrophotography processes are no longer a black box.

Through both physical experiments and detailed computer simulations, we examine some of the underlying causes of image noise in dry-powder xerography. Although examples are drawn from common electrographic technologies, such as powder-cloud jumping development, our goal is to identify and quantify the limits of toner-based printing systems without regard to any specific product-intent hardware. Understanding and modeling the principle forces between charged toner particles (and surfaces) allows us to simulate complex self-organizing structures that evolve during the development process. It is hoped that studying how these structures form, and how toner properties affect their formation, will lead to improved dry-powder printing technologies that rival lithography.

The paperless office, ballyhooed as the imminent future by Business Week in 1975 has been notable largely for its non-occurrence. In fact the entire concept has been redefined as we come to recognize that, in many markets, paper is not being used less so much as it is being used differently. I will talk about the trends in paper use both in terms of volume and in applications. Paper has gone from a static repository to take on more active rolls at the on-ramp and off-ramps of the electronic web that connects us, the protection and security of our information as well as, increasingly a component of smart document systems. Through analysis of this data I will show how the technologies we are developing can and will materially change our relationship with print, information and document intensive work practices and services.

At present laser printing has not been drawn many attention as a manufacturing technique. But it offers an interesting alternative to inkjet printing for many digital manufacturing applications. We first give a short comparison of both printing techniques before presenting an efficient production method for highly complex biochips – peptide arrays – based on laser printing. Peptide arrays are powerful tools for developing new medical substances as well as for diagnosis and therapy techniques. The new production method will enable the potential of peptide arrays to be effectively utilized for the first time.

Printing is certainly one of, if not the fastest, least expensive, and highest volume manufacturing technique. Its use for the deposition of functional materials offers enormous advantages for the preparation of devices over large areas, on virtually any substrate, and potentially inexpensively. Although printing processes have existed for thousands of years, it has only been relatively recently that the materials have become available for printing functional, particularly electronic devices.A wide variety of different printing processes can be used for printed electronics. Digital Fabrication of electronic devices can incorporate either high volume printing processes – those that use a physical master (printing plate or cylinder), archaically known as “analog” printing, or techniques that don't use a physical master (also known as “digital” printing processes). Impact as well as non-impact printing processes are important. For device fabrication, the printing process flow depends on many factors, some of which are dictated by material properties, others are determined by printing related factors such as resolution, registration, and economic considerations.This article will focus on the printing processes used for printed electronics, giving specific examples, as well as trends, challenges, needs, and future opportunities.

We have commenced basic research on the three-dimensional pattern formation of micro-gel beads for applications in biological tissue engineering. In this new technique, micro-gel beads are premagnetized by doping them with magnetic nanoparticles. Living cells will be included in beads for actual use. If a nonuniform magnetic field is applied to a solution containing these magnetized beads, the beads will align, contact, and form a 3D structure. The structure is controlled by the seed pattern of the magnetic particles plugged in a substrate and the profile of the magnetic field distribution. We have constructed tubes, which imitate blood vessels, for demonstration using gel beads whose diameters are of the order of several tens of micrometers. The diameter of the demonstrated tube was less than 0.5 mm and its length was 6.6 mm, although living cells were not included in the beads. Numerical calculations by using the discrete element method were conducted to confirm the formation of the tube and to predict the effect of centrifugal force, which will be applied to fill other tissues in the space between magnetically patterned beads. Although this unique technology is in the nascent stage, it can potentially be used to form threedimensional, nonuniform, and heterogeneous artificial organs for tissue engineering.