Abstract
Experimental work was carried out in order to produce a novel grade of ink-jet paper that has both high print-out quality and price competitiveness. Usually, silica and PVOH has been used for ink-jet paper to design the coating layer that has a hydrophilic and micro-porous structure. However, poor rheological characteristics and low productivity of the silica-PVOH system make the price of the ink-jet paper high. The main focus of this study was replacing the conventional silica (coating pigment) PVOH (binder) coating system with the new PCC (coating pigment) cationic starch (binder) coating system, and optimizing thecoating technology associated with PPC-cationic starch system. In this study, ink-jet print quality of PCC-coated papers was compared with that of silica-coated paper. Two types of PCC were used: conventional type and colloid type. It turned out that PCC C, a conventional coating pigment, has not given a desirable result: it showed high dot reproduction, but it gave low optical density. In spite of low dot reproduction, the qualities of PCC A were comparable or superior to those of silica in optical density, color reproduction, and the uniformity of printing surface. It was also shown that the problems that are happened when the dosage level of cationic starch was too low were varied with ink-type used in each printer. However, in the case of low binder level, the produced image was widely spread resulting fromtoo low optical density of images, or from the lack of bonding ability to set ink into coating surface.
