Radiation imagery chemistry: process – composition – or product th – Electric or magnetic imagery – e.g. – xerography,... – Radiation-sensitive composition or product
Reexamination Certificate
2000-11-28
2002-04-16
Chapman, Mark (Department: 1753)
Radiation imagery chemistry: process, composition, or product th
Electric or magnetic imagery, e.g., xerography,...
Radiation-sensitive composition or product
C430S067000, C399S159000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06372398
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic device having a cured film that is obtained by applying a silicon-containing coating agent and curing it, and a manufacturing method thereof. It also concerns an electrophotographic photoreceptor and a process cartridge having such an electrophotographic photoreceptor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Silicon-containing coating agents (resin) have unique characteristics different from those of other resins, such as heat resistance, oxidation stability, weatherability (light, ozone, radioactive rays), electrical characteristics (insulating characteristic, corona resistant property), interface property (mold-releasing property, foam-eliminating property, water repellency), etc.; therefore, these agents have been widely used as sealing agents, coating agents, bonding agents, etc. in various fields, such as building and construction industries, machining industries, electricity industries, the medical field and automobile industries.
In recent years, much attention has been focussed on the application of these coating agents to the electronic devices field. Research efforts have been made in the application of organic photo-functional materials to the electronic device field because of their productivity, ease of material designing, safety, etc. particularly in organic electronic devices such as electrophotographic photoreceptors, organic electro-luminescent elements, memory elements and wavelength conversion elements, and various modifications have been made, and these organic photo-functional materials have been put into practical use. From the viewpoint of stability and long life in these organic electronic devices, for example, in organic electro-luminescent elements, there have been demands for those materials which would not cause a morphological change in a film due to generated joule heat.
Moreover, in the electrophotographic photoreceptors, there have been demands for those organic photo-functional materials which are not only chemically stable with respect to ozone, NOx, etc. but also physically stable with respect to various physical stresses such as heat and mechanical force.
In the field of electrophotographic photoreceptors, in order to meet such demands, silicon-containing coating agents have been proposed, for example, those disclosed in “Proceedings of IS & T's Eleventh International Congress on Advances in Non-Impact Printing Technologies, p. 57 to 59”, U.S. Pat. No. 2575536 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 9-190004. In these references, a sol-gel method is used to form a three-dimensional firm network by using siloxane bonds; thus, an organic-inorganic hybridization is carried out so as to greatly improve the mechanical strength.
Normally, an organic material and an inorganic material have poor compatibility because they have greatly different characteristics, and even when they are simply mixed, it is difficult to form a uniformly cured film. For this reason, in JP-A No. 9-190004, an organic silicon-modified positive-hole carrier compound, which is formed by directly introducing a group (silicon-containing group) containing silicon and having a hydrolytic property into an electric charge carrier agent, is used so that the inorganic material and the organic material are firmly chemical-bonded to each other directly and uniformly soluble in each other.
Moreover, a method has been proposed in which a silicon-containing group is directly introduced into a photo-responsive material and dispersed in inorganic glass; and the application of this method has been considered not only in electrophotographic photoreceptors, but also in various fields such as coloring of glass, surface protecting in polymer lenses and coating, bonding layers between FRP as well as carbon fiber reinforced resin fiber and polymers, non-linear optical materials, photo-chromic materials and photochemical hole burning materials, and further development of these materials is expected.
However, even in the case when a functional organic silicon compound to which a silicon-containing group is directly introduced is used, if it is simply mixed and applied, a phase separation takes place prior to the curing reaction and a uniform film is not obtained. Therefore, in general, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,116,703 and JP-A No. 9-188764, a functional organic silicon compound and an inorganic material precursor are preliminarily subjected to a common hydrolytic process and after having been allowed to react partially, a coating process is carried out. In this common hydrolytic process, these materials are dissolved in a solvent that can dissolve them. An acidic catalyst, such as acetic acid, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, phosphoric acid or nitric acid, and various ester-exchange catalysts such as metallic alkoxide, etc., together with an appropriate amount of water are added and these are allowed to react. This method is very effective in obtaining a uniform film.
In order to obtain such a uniform film, the reactivity of the functional organic silicon compound and the inorganic material precursor with respect to the hydrolytic reaction, condensation reaction, etc. need to be made approximately the same. In general, since the reactivity of a silicon compound is determined by the kind of a hydrolytic group (reactive group), it is preferable to use the same hydrolytic group in both of the functional organic silicon compound and the inorganic material precursor.
With respect to the synthesizing method for a functional organic silicon compound having a hydrolytic group, various methods have been proposed, for example, in JP-A No. 10-251277 and J. Chem. Soc. Chem. Commun. (1992) p. 1079-1080. Silicon-containing groups in the functional organic silicon compound synthesized in these methods mostly have high reactivity; for example, SiOMe and SiOEt. This is because most of the commercially available inorganic precursors are limited to those having a high reactivity for the purpose of shortening the reaction time of hydrolysis and condensation, and increasing the reaction point, etc. For this reason, in order to form a uniform film, it is necessary to replace the hydrolytic substitution group in the functional organic silicon compound with a group having higher reactivity.
However, when synthesized, a compound having a hydrolytic group having a comparatively high reactivity tends to react with the small amount of moisture contained in the reaction solvent, or tends to be adsorbed in an adsorbent, causing a reduction in the yield and subsequent high costs. In particular, since the materials for the functional materials are expensive, the disadvantage in terms of cost is significant. Moreover, since the functional materials need to be highly purified, processes for refining the synthesized compound in various methods are required; however, because of its high reactivity, applicable adsorbents, solvents, etc. are limited, and high purification is difficult. Furthermore, the reaction conditions such as temperature and catalysts at the time of synthesizing are limited, with the result that the synthesis routes are limited, causing a reduction in the kinds of the functional organic silicon compounds to be synthesized. For this reason, with respect to the hydrolytic group, it is preferabe to use those having low reactivity at the time of production.
However, when a common hydrolytic process is carried out by using a low-reactive functional organic silicon compound and a highly-reactive inorganic material precursor, the hydrolytic process of the highly-reactive compound progresses much faster, with the result that the composition of the coating agent tends to become ununiform, form deposition, and cause gelation. When a film is formed by using such coating agent, an ununiform film tends to be formed and it fails to maintain sufficient stability against stresses such as heat and mechanical force.
Moreover, when such an ununiform coating agent is used for manufacturing an electrophotographic ph
Ishii Rie
Nukada Katsumi
Seki Mieko
Yamada Wataru
Chapman Mark
Fuji 'Xerox Co., Ltd.
LandOfFree
Electronic device, manufacturing method of electronic... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with Electronic device, manufacturing method of electronic..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Electronic device, manufacturing method of electronic... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-2891805