• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.29 no.10
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• pp.639-646
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• 2019

Ink-jet printing is a manufacturing process technology that directly prints a digitalized design pattern onto a substrate using a fine ink jetting system. In this study, environmentally friendly yellow aqueous ceramic ink is synthesized by mixture of distilled water, yellow ceramic pigment and additives for ink-jet printing. The graft polymer, which combines electrostatic repulsion and steric hindrance mechanism, is used as a surfactant for dispersion stability of aqueous ceramic ink. Synthesized ceramic ink with graft polymer surfactant shows better dispersion stability than did ceramic ink with PAA surfactant; synthesized ink also shows desirable ink-jet printability with the formation of a single ink droplet during printability test. Finally, ceramic ink printed on glass substrate and ceramic ink with graft polymer surfactant shows a high contact angle without surface treatment on glass substrate. Consequently, it is confirmed that the ceramic ink with graft polymer surfactant can achieve high printing resolution without additional surface treatment process.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.56 no.5
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• pp.461-467
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• 2019

Ink-jet printing technology, which utilizes a digitalized design to print fine ink directly on a substrate, has been of interest in various industries due to its high efficiency and adaptability to various materials. Recently, active attempts have been made to apply ceramic materials having excellent heat resistance, light resistance, and chemical resistance to the ink-jet printing process. In this study, ceramic ink was synthesized by combining ceramic pigments with UV curable polymer. 3D printability at various contact angles between ceramic ink and substrate was analyzed in detail. Rheological properties of the synthesized ceramic ink were optimized to meet the requirements of the ink-jet printing process, and the contact angle of UV curable ceramic ink was controlled through surface treatment of the substrate. The potential for additive manufacturing of ceramic material using ink-jet printing was investigated by analyzing the effect of contact angle control on ceramic ink droplets and their 3D printability.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.478-483
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• 2017

The advantage of ceramic ink-jet printing technology is the accurate and fast printing process of digital images for various products. For digital ink-jet printing applications, ceramic ink requires proper viscosity and surface tension, along with dispersion stability of the inorganic pigments. The purpose of this study is the formulation of an environment-friendly ceramic ink with a water-based system; using nano-sized $CoAl_2O_4$ pigment as a raw material, ink should have dispersion stability to prevent nozzle clogging during ink-jet printing process. In addition, the surface tension of the ceramic ink was optimized with the polysiloxane surfactant according to the surface tension requirement (20 - 45 mN/m) for ceramic ink-jet printing; by adjusting the viscosity with poly ethylene oxide, jetting behavior of the ceramic ink was investigated according to changes in the physical features through drop watcher measurement.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.11
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• pp.583-589
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• 2017

Ceramic ink-jet printing has become a widespread technology in ceramic tile and ceramicware industries, due to its capability of manufacturing products on demand with various designs. Generally, thermally stable ceramic inks of digital primary colors(cyan, magenta, yellow, black) are required for ink-jet printing of full color image on ceramic tile. Here, we synthesized an aqueous glass-ceramic ink, which is free of Volatile organic compound(VOC) evolution, and investigated its inkjet printability. $CoAl_2O_4$ inorganic pigment and glass frit were dispersed in aqueous solution, and rheological behavior was optimized. The formulated glass-ceramic ink was suitably jetted as single sphere-shaped droplets without satellite drops. After ink-jet printing and firing processes, the printed glass-ceramic ink pattern on glazed ceramic tile was stably maintained without ink spreading phenomena and showed an improved scratch resistance.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.75-80
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• 2016

Ink-jet printing has become a widespread technology with the society's increase in aesthetic awareness. Especially, ink-jet printing using glazed ceramic ink can offer huge advantages including high quality decoration, continuous processing, glaze patterning, and direct reproduction of high resolution images. Recently, ceramic ink-jet printing has been rapidly introduced to decorate the porcelain product and the ceramic tiles. In this study, we provide an effective method to apply ceramic ink-jet decorations on the glass substrates using a oleophobic coating with perfluorooctyl trichlorosilane. The ink-jet printed patterns were much clearer on the oleophobically coated glass surface than the bare glass surface. The contact angle of the ceramic ink was maximized to the value of $64.0^{\circ}$ on the glass surface, when it was treated with 1 vol% PFTS solution for 1 min. The effects of the printing conditions and firing process on the ink-jet printed patterns on the oleophobically coated glass were also investigated.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.256-262
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• 2017

Digital ink-jet printing technology using ceramic ink, which is thermally stable at high temperature above $1000^{\circ}C$, has an advantage of eco-friendly process applicable to manufacturing products with an excellent durability and various designs. Recently, replacement from conventional manufacturing process to digital process using ink-jet printing technique has been significantly accelerated in ceramic tile industry. In this study, we investigated ink-jet printability of ceramic ink on ceramic tile. Cyan, magenta, yellow, black ceramic inks, which are digital primary color of ink-jet printing, were printed on glazed surface of ceramic tiles, and their printabilities were comparatively analyzed. High temperature sintering process is generally required for manufacturing ceramic products, thus effect of sintering process on printed pattern of ceramic ink was also investigated by analyzing ink penetration depth and ink dot area.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.73-80
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• 2014

Ink-jet printing technology has been widely attractive due to its facility for direct and fine printing on various substrates. Recent studies have focused on expanding the application of ink-jet printing technology from general consumer use and design companies to the prototype production of precision parts and parts manufacturing. The use of ink-jet printing technology in decorated tableware, tiles, and other ceramic products also has many advantages. The printing process is fast and can be adaptable to various kinds of objects because there is no direct contact point between the printer and the substrates to be printed. For application to ceramic product decoration, inks containing highly dispersed inorganic nano-pigments are required. Here we report the synthesis and characterization of blue $CoAl_2O_4$ nanopigment for ink-jet printing. Blue ceramic ink based on the obtained $CoAl_2O_4$ pigment was prepared by dissolving $CoAl_2O_4$ pigment in a mixed solution of ethylene glycol and ethanol with volume ratios of 7:3 and 8:2, respectively, to obtain the appropriate viscosity for ink-jet printing. The ink solution contained 15 wt% of $CoAl_2O_4$ pigment and Cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide(CTAB) and Sodium dodecyl sulfate(SDS) as dispersive agents. The prepared blue ceramic ink was stably jetted and formed a sphere-shaped droplet from an ink-jet printer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.11a
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• pp.99-99
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• 2009

Two different micro-flows during the evaporation of ink droplets were achieved by engineering both surface tension gradient and compositional gradient across the ink droplet: (1) Coffee-ring generating flow resulting from the outward flow inside the ink droplet & (2) Marangoni flow leading to the circulation flow inside the ink droplet. The surface tension gradient and the compositional gradient in the ink droplets were tailored by mixing two different solvents with difference surface tension and boiling point. In order to create the coffee-ring generating flow (outward flow), a single-solvent system using N,N-dimethylformamide with nano-sized spherical alumina particles was formulated, Marangoni flow (circulation flow) was created in the ink droplets by combining N,N-dimethylformamide and fotmamide with the spherical alumina powders as a co-solvent ink system. We have investigated the effect of these two different flows on the formation of ceramic films by inkjet printing method, The packing density of the ceramic films printed with two different ink systems (single- and co-solvent systems) and their surface roughness were characterized. The dielectric properties of these inkjet-printed ceramic films such as dielectric constant and dissipation factor were also studied in order to evaluate the feasibility of their application to the electronic ceramic package substrate.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.123-129
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• 2018

Ink-jet printing technology with ceramic ink of the four digital primary colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black; CMYK) can provide stable coloration even in the high-temperature firing process. Ceramic ink-jet printing can be widely applied in construction and ceramic industries due to the advantages of accurate and fast printing process of digital images for various products. Generally, organic solvent with proper viscosity and surface tension has been used in digital ink-jet printing process. However, the needs of ceramic ink without VOCs emission is increasing. In the present study, eco-friendly ceramic ink was synthesized by combining alumino boro-silicate glass frit and $CoAl_2O_4$ inorganic pigment based on an aqueous solvent that does not generate VOCs. The rheological properties and dispersion stability of aqueous ceramic ink were optimized. Jetting behavior and printing characteristics of the ceramic ink were also investigated in detail. As a result, the formulated aqueous ceramic complex ink showed a suitable jetting behavior without satellite drop by adjusting viscosity and surface tension. The ceramic ink can be printed on glass substrate with minimized spreading phenomena duo to high contact angle.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.498-503
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• 2013

Over the past decade, the feasibility of using ink-jet printing for the decoration of porcelain tiles has been explored, and significant advances have been made regarding the technologies underlying printing system and materials. An ink-jet printing system for porcelain tiles has many advantages compared with a conventional printing system, including the following: (1) it is a digital process; (2) it uses non-contact printing; (3) it allows random image generation; (4) it is a highly efficient process (reduced production cost); (5) it offers massive and continuous production; and (6) it uses inorganic pigment colorants. For these reasons, ink-jet printing systems for porcelain tiles have been commercialized and are at present rapidly spreading toceramics-leading countries such as Spain, Italy, China and Japan. We also developed a proprietary system involving a piezo-electric drop-on-demand method and an ink-circulation step. The resolution of this system is greater than 360 dpi after a heat treatment and the maximum printable width is 600 mm, even when setting the printing head unit with four digital colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). In addition, we systematically developed ceramic colorant-containing inks and tile-printing technology applicable to our ink-jet printing system.