| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣藝術大學 === 應用媒體藝術研究所 === 94 === After a thousand years of development traditional printing is nearly fully mature and has become very competitive. Decades of effort by digital printing to seize market share is now beginning to show results as well, while industrial ink-jet printing has only begun taking hold this century. Looking at the trends in printing technology, electronically driven non-contact digital printing will gradually replace traditional forms of mechanical contact printing. Ink-jet printing shows the most potential in digital printing, and in the foreseeable future ink-jet printers will only continue to increase in speed. Ink-jet printers will no longer be just limited to printing computer documents or samples, becoming instead the technology of choice for digital printing. As the technology does not involve the use of plates, any kind of material may be printed upon. When combined with nano technology materials that are expected to form the basis of Humanity’s Fourth Industrial Revolution, new horizons in printing applications await exploration through ink-jet printing this century.
Due to the trend towards digital printing as well as the boundless opportunities offered by nano-technology, the objective of this study is to examine the use of nano ink pigments with ink-jet printing. For this study, ink technology developed in the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s Union Chemical Laboratory was used as a basis for research over two years with limited resources to overcome the difficulties associated with operating at the nano level. The purpose of this study is to explore what effects reducing ink- jet pigment particles to nano level have on the ink-jet printing results, including characteristics such as hue, value, intensity, solid ink density and color space, as well as any variations and changes to the reflection spectrum. This study took an experimental approach to produce five sets of UV ink-jet inks with varying ink pigment particle diameters in the sub-micron and nano range. The inks were then applied to ink-jet paper that was subsequently analyzed using instruments and software to test for differences in their color. The results from the study are as follows:
1. Hue: As the ink particles become finer, the hue for Yellow (Y) moved in the 90° direction by 2.37°; magenta (M) shifted towards yellow by 25.04° to become more orange; cyan (C) shifted towards blue (B) in the direction of 270° by 9.33°.
2. Brightness: The finer the particles are for three colored inks, the lower their brightness becomes. The color becomes darker, with yellow decreasing slightly by 0.41% and magenta by 2.4%. Cyan exhibited the greatest difference with a drop of 12.25%.
3. Saturation: When the pigment particles become finer, the saturation of yellow increased by 3.25, magenta increased by 9.51 while cyan decreased by 3.06. This indicated that yellow and magenta increased in color saturation as the particles became finer while the opposite was true for cyan.
4. Solid Ink Density: When the ink particles become finer, the solid ink density of the four colors all increased. Yellow increased by 0.1, magenta by 0.11, cyan by 0.53 and black by 1.19. This indicated that nano particles had enhanced light absorption characteristics.
5. Reflection Spectrum: When the ink particles became finer, the reflection spectrum for yellow (Y), magenta (M) and red (R) showed increased overlap. The reflectivity of cyan (C), green (G) and blue (B) decreased along with the particle size. None of the six colors showed any signs of red or blue shift in their optical spectrum.
6. Color Space: The Lab color space generated by the five sets of inks with varying particle sizes did not vary significantly.
Overall, when ink-jet ink pigment particle specifications were reduced from sub-micron to nano scale, the solidity of the printed colors was improved. This makes it suitable for backlit products such as advertising lights and signs. This study also examined the color characteristics of liquid ink and solidified ink applied to paper. The ink with the finest particles was also applied to paper and then placed under a SEM electron microscope to measure the particle sizes and the roundness of its ink film. The result showed that the ink particles’ size changed by an order of magnitude, though the cause of this change remains to be explored. There are still many more topics that await exploration in the field of nano materials and ink-jet printing.
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