Compositions: coating or plastic – Coating or plastic compositions – Marking
Reexamination Certificate
1998-03-17
2001-07-17
Klemanski, Helene (Department: 1755)
Compositions: coating or plastic
Coating or plastic compositions
Marking
C106S031580, C347S100000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06261349
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recording method and an image recording apparatus, more particularly to an ink jet image recording method and an image recording apparatus therefor. The present invention also relates to an image recording acceleration liquid for use in the image recording method and the image recording apparatus.
DISCUSSION OF BACKGROUND
The ink-jet printers have been widely utilized in recent years because of the advantages of low noise and low running cost, and color printers capable of producing color images on a sheet of plain paper have also been placed on the market.
Conventionally, as coloring agents for use in inks for office-use ink-jet printers, dyes having high solubility are mainly used in order to avoid a problem of clogging of the nozzles of the ink-jet printers with the inks. Recently, however, pigment-containing inks are also increasingly used to prepare posters which are required to be water-resistant and light-resistant. The pigment-containing inks, however, tend to cause the above-mentioned clogging problem, so that it is extremely difficult to maintain the printing reliability of the inks. Furthermore, when high color reproduction performance is required, for instance, as in photographic images and CG (computer graphics), sufficient coloring of cyan and magenta cannot be performed by the pigment-containing inks and accordingly clear images cannot be obtained by the pigment-containing inks.
When a color image is printed on a plain paper, using an ink-jet printer, in order to minimize the spreading of inks in a color boundary portion such as a portion where two colors are superimposed, a surfactant is added to the inks to improve the ink penetration performance as disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 55-65269. In such a case, feathering takes place in characters or fine lines, so that there is devised such a system that an ink with low ink penetration performance is used only when characters are printed in black. However, the control of the spreading of the inks in the color boundaries and the prevention of the occurring of the feathering in characters and fine lines are both still insufficient for use in practice.
In order to solve such problems as mentioned above, a recording material such as plain paper coated in advance with a material for fixing a dye contained in an ink when images are formed on the surface of the recording material with the ink, or a recording material coated with a white pigment or a water-soluble polymer are disclosed, for instance, in Japanese Laid-Open Patient Applications 56-86789, 55-144172, 55-81992, 52-53012 or
56-89594.
Furthermore, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 56-89595, there is proposed an ink-jet recording method in which a recording material is in advance sprayed with a solution of a polymer such as carboxylmethylcellulose, polyvinyl alcohol, or polyvinyl acetate, and printing is performed by spraying an ink to a polymer solution sprayed portion of the recording material. In this ink-jet printing method, the sharpness of the printed image can be improved, but the dryness of the printed image cannot be improved. The result is that the image quality of a color image obtained by this ink-jet printing method cannot be improved so much.
For instance, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Applications 64-63185, 8-20159 and 8-20161, there is proposed an ink-jet recording method in which an image recording acceleration liquid which contains a compound capable of making insoluble a dye contained in an ink is deposited on the surface of a recording material by an ink-jet method, and then printing is performed by spraying an ink to a portion of the recording material where the image recording acceleration liquid is deposited. In this method, the amount of water deposited on a two-color superimposed portion on the recording material is so large that the spreading of the ink in the color boundaries cannot be sufficiently controlled and it may occur that the ink penetrates the recording material and reaches the back side of the recording material (this phenomenon is hereinafter referred to as “strike through”). Furthermore, this method has a problem that the recording material tends to curl or cockle.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is therefore a first object of the present invention to provide an image recording method free of the above-mentioned conventional problems, capable of recording images with high reproduction performance, in particular, of fine line images, with excellent water resistance, high image quality free of ink spreading in color boundaries, and excellent color tone.
A second object of the present invention is to provide an image recording method capable of recording the above-mentioned images at high speed with the improvement of image fixing speed.
A third object of the present invention is to provide an image recording method capable of recording the above-mentioned images with high image density, free of “strike through”, with the occurrence of “curling” and “cockling” being minimized.
A fourth object of the present invention is to provide an image recording apparatus capable of performing any of the above-mentioned image recording methods.
A fifth object of the present invention is to provide an image recording acceleration liquid for use in the above-mentioned image recording methods and image recording apparatus.
The first, second, third and fourth objects of the present invention can be achieved by an image recording method for forming an image on a recording material comprising the steps of:
applying to a recording material a colorless or light colored image recording acceleration liquid comprising a compound which is capable of making insoluble a coloring agent contained in a recording liquid which comprises the coloring agent and a solvent for dispersing or dissolving the coloring agent, and
depositing the recording liquid imagewise on the recording material by ejecting the recording liquid in the form of droplets onto the recording material, the image recording acceleration liquid further comprising at least one of surfactants represented by any of formulae (1) to (5):
wherein R
1
and R
2
are each independently an alkyl group having at least 3 carbon atoms, which may be branched; and M
+
is a cation selected from the group consisting of an alkali metal cation, ammonium cation, an alkanolamine cation, a quaternary ammonium cation and a quaternary phosphonium cation,
wherein R
3
and R
4
are each independently an alkyl group having 5 to 7 carbon atoms, and m is an integer of 5 to 20,
wherein R
5
is an alkyl group having 6 to 14 carbon atoms, which may be branched, and n is an intager of 5 to 20,
wherein p and q are each independently an integer of 0 to 20, and
wherein R
6
is an alkyl group having 6 to 14 carbon atoms, which may be branched, and p and q are each independently an integer of 0 to 20.
In the above image recording method, it is preferable that the recording liquid exhibit a contact angle of 90° or less with respect to the recording material after the image recording acceleration liquid has been applied to the recording material.
Further, in the above it is preferable that in the image recording method, the recording liquid be applied in a deposition amount of 0.2 g/m
2
to 10 g/m
2
to the recording material.
The fourth object of the present invention can be achieved by an image recording apparatus for forming an image on a recording material comprising:
means for applying to the recording material the colorless or light colored image recording acceleration liquid for controlling the penetration performance and image fixing performance of the recording liquid which comprises a coloring agent and a solvent for dispersing or dissolving the coloring agent, and
means for depositing the recording liquid imagewise on the recording material by ejecting the recording liquid in the form of droplets onto the recording material, the image recording acceleration liquid comprising (a)
Igarashi Masato
Kojima Akio
Konishi Akiko
Koyano Masayuki
Mochizuki Hiroyuki
Klemanski Helene
McDermott & Will & Emery
Ricoh & Company, Ltd.
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