We have developed a new white ink which features less sedimentation and high white opacity even upon non-permeable media. Titanium dioxide has been used in the white ink in order to obtain high opacity, but it has the problem of sedimentation. Hollow resin particles have also been used for white ink. Sedimentation is drastically reduced, however, white opacity is limited when heating and drying especially on non-permeable media. In order to solve these problems, we focused on characteristics of hollow silica particles with low density in addition to heat resistance and solvent resistance. We developed new white pigment of hollow silica particles which lead to less sedimentation and high white opacity by optimizing primary particle size and wall thickness size.
Tomohiro Hirade, Hiroshi Goto, "New White Pigment Ink - Correlation between Structure of Inorganic Hollow Particles and White Opacity -" in Proc. IS&T Printing for Fabrication: Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP34), 2018, pp 53 - 56, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2018.34.53