Research On UV-lLED Inkjet Ink

With the growing voice of environmental protection, environmental ink is an importanttrend. In recent years, UV ink draws much attention and has great prospect for developmentbecause of its environmental protection, efficient, high-quality, wide adaptability and some otheradvantages. However, the conventional UV light is high-pressure mercury light, because of thedisadvantages of short life, power consumption, heat distortion of printing materials and heavymetals pollution and other defects, while UV-LED light source is in photoelectric conversionprinciple, the curing method is more energy saving and environmental protection with longerlamp life and lower heat radiation, so it becomes the new darling of ink. This research aims tochange the composition and formulations of the ink and achieve better curing speed and improveprint quality.In this paper, based on previous research of UV inkjet ink, by preparing the inks withdifferent combinations of pigment and photoinitiator, and then to be cured by UV-LED light withdifferent wavelengths and radiation energy, then we can know how the the matching of thepigment’s transmissive window, photoinitiator’s absorption spectrum and radiation spectrum ofthe light source can have an effect on the curing speed of UV-LED inkjet ink. Besides, the inkswere prepared by different types of photoinitiator, prepolymer and monomer to study the effectof each component of ink on ink performance, such as dispersion, viscosity, surface tension,curing rate and other properties, and ink formulations were designed through experimentalformulations. Also, the inks and ink pastes were made by changing different kinds of monomersto study the effects on dispersion of ink paste and printing quality of UV-LED inkjet ink.The results show that the prepolymer, the structure of monomer, the content ofphotoinitiator and its light absorption, the parameters of illuminant all have a significant impacton UV-LED inkjet ink, the prepared inks match the illuminant can have higher curing speed.Both prepolymer and monomer can have different effects on ink performance, and the inkprepared according to the experimental formula has good overall performance. Also, monomershave a greater impact on the dispersion of ink paste and the printing quality of UV-LED inkjetink.