Ink jet recording sheet

Stock material or miscellaneous articles – Ink jet stock for printing – Hardened – cured – or cross-linked ink receptive layer

Reexamination Certificate

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Details

C428S032280, C428S032290, C428S032320, C428S032340

Reexamination Certificate

active

06635320

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a material for recording which is suitable to ink jet recording using liquid ink such as aqueous ink or oily ink or solid ink which is a solid at ambient temperature and is subjected to printing after it is melted and liquefied, and, particularly, to a recording sheet which has excellent ink receiving ability and is reduced in bleeding with time.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with recent rapid development of information industries, a variety of information process systems have been developed. This is accompanied with the development of recording methods and equipment suitable to each information system and these methods and equipment have been put to practical use. Among these recording methods, an ink jet recording method is being widely used in home use as well as in offices because it enables recording in various recording materials and the hardware used in this method is relatively inexpensive, compact and has high soundless characteristics.
Also, along with the recent progress in high-resolution ink jet printers, so-called photograph-like high quality recorded materials have come to be available. In addition, along with the development of hardware (equipment), various recording sheets for ink jet recording are being developed.
The general characteristics required for such recording sheets are, for example, as follows: (1) it must have quick drying properties (the rate of absorption of ink must be high), (2) the diameter of an ink dot must be proper and uniform (any bleeding does not occur), (3) it must have good granularity, (4) the circularity of a dot must be high, (5) the color density must be high, (6) the chroma must be high (the color must not be subdued), (7) the light resistance and water resistance of an image portion must be high, (8) even if it is stored for a long time, it is resistant to the bleeding of an image, (9) it must have high whiteness, (10) it must have high preservation ability, (11) it must have high resistance to deformation and good dimensional stability (curling is sufficiently small) and (12) it has good running characteristics in a hardware.
Moreover, besides the above characteristics, glossiness and surface smoothness are required and it is also required for a printed paper to have a texture similar to a silver salt photograph in applications for photo glossy paper to be used to obtain a photo-like high quality recorded material.
As recording sheets to be used for ink jet recording, those obtained by applying a pigment such as silica and a water-soluble binder to a support made of paper or a plastic film as described in, for example, the respective publications of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 55-51583, JP-A No. 55-144172, JP-A No. 55-150395, JP-A No. 56-148582, JP-A No. 56-148583, JP-A No. 56-148584, JP-A No. 56-148585, JP-A No. 57-14091, JP-A No. 57-38185, JP-A No. 57-129778, JP-A No. 57-129979, JP-A No. 60-219084 and JP-A No. 60-245588 are known. However, all of these proposed recording sheets have very low glossiness and are unsatisfactory for applications such as photo glossy paper.
Also, recording sheets using a pseudoboehmite sol and a water-soluble binder are proposed in the respective publications of JP-A No. 2-276670, JP-A No. 3-215082, JP-A No. 3-281383 and JP-A No. 6-199035. Although these recording sheets fulfill the requirements as to the gloss characteristics to some extent, there are, for example, the problems that the production cost of the pseudoboehmite is high and it is difficult to prepare a coating solution.
Further, proposed in JP-A No. 4-223190 is ink jet recording paper provided with a recording layer comprising 5 to 20 g/m
2
of synthetic silica and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) on substrate paper coated with 0.1 g/m
2
of borax or boric acid. The aforementioned technologies are intended only to improve the film strength of a recording layer reduced in the content of a binder. The recording paper has inferior glossiness and is hence unsatisfactory for applications such as photo glossy paper.
Recording materials using various water-soluble polymers to impart glossiness are proposed. For example, those obtained by applying polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinylpyrrolidone or gelatin to a support made of paper or a plastic film as described in the respective publications of JP-A No. 58-89391, JP-A No. 58-134784, JP-A No. 58-134786, JP-A No. 60-44386, JP-A No. 60-132785, JP-A No. 60-145879, JP-A No. 60-168651 and JP-A No. 60-171143 are known. These recording sheets have superior glossiness, but are inferior in the rate of drying ink and are hence unsatisfactory for applications such as photo glossy paper.
On the other hand, ink jet recording sheets which fulfill the aforementioned requirements as to the characteristics of ink jet recording sheets and as to the production cost are proposed in the respective publications of JP-A No. 7-276789, JP-A No. 8-174992, JP-A No. 11-115308 and JP-A No. 11-192777.
In the above publication of JP-A No. 7-276789, a recording sheet is proposed in which a colorant receptor layer formed of an inorganic pigment fine particle and a water-soluble resin and having a three-dimensional structure having a high void ratio is disposed on a support. This structure is said to ensure that the aforementioned ink-absorbing ability is improved and color mixing bleeding in printing is sufficiently suppressed whereby a high-resolution image can be obtained. This colorant receptor layer may be formed by compounding a large amount of particles having a small size. It is necessary to decrease the amount of a binder used for the formation of a layer so that voids are formed. Therefore, this sheet has the drawback that cracks occur if the coating layer is dried quickly, thereby damaging the transparency and appearance of the colorant receptor layer.
As a method used to prevent cracks of the ink receptor layer, a method in which the viscosity of a binder in a coating solution is increased is proposed in JP-A No. 9-109545. In this method, however, there is the fear of reduced workability and occurrence of uneven coating, showing that this method does not reach a practically effective level.
A method of preventing cracks by using a coating solution comprising an inorganic particle, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and boric acid or borate is disclosed in the respective publications of JP-A No. 7-76161 and JP-A No. 10-119423. In this method, also, a large reduction in workability is caused by a rise in the viscosity of the coating solution. This method also poses the problem of the inferior stability of the solution with time and does not reach a practically effective level.
An ink jet recording sheet provided with a colorant receptor layer, which comprises a fine inorganic pigment particle and a water-soluble resin and has a high void ratio, on a support is proposed in the respective publications of JP-A No. 10-119423 and JP-A No. 10-217601.
These ink jet recording sheets have good ink-absorbing ability and high ink-receiving ability enough to form a high-resolution image and exhibits high glossiness due to its structure. However, a support coated with a resin such as polyethylene on both sides thereof is used as the support in view of glossiness and texture, and therefore a high-boiling point solvent contained in the colorant receptor layer is not vaporized and the solvent is not absorbed in the support. Consequently, the high-boiling point solvent remains unremoved in the colorant receptor layer, giving rise to the problem that when the sheet is stored under high temperature and humidity after an image is printed, the solvent is diffused together with a dye in the colorant receptor layer, causing the bleeding of the image with time (hereinafter referred to as “bleeding with time” where necessary).
Also, it is widely adopted to add a compound having an amino group or an ammonium salt, especially, a polymer compound containing these group and salt with the intention of fixing a dye component in ink in the ink jet recording

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