Owing to the advantages they offer--"plate-less," "on-demand" and "contactless"--ink-jet printers have been widely used in many fields. Wide-format printers are especially becoming popular for outdoor signage. There are many types of wide-format printers, including those used for water-based, solvent, UV, sublimation, and textile printing. The characteristics of the printers determine the applications of the printers. In this review, the characteristics of printers and the different types of printers are discussed systematically.

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By using a microscopic contact angle meter, it is possible to measure the contact angle with picoliter droplets discharged from the ink-jet head and evaluate the wettability and permeability of the ink and paper. Permeation of a droplet with a volume of around 10pL is rapid (the most rapid permeation that we have observed lasted only a few milliseconds), and a high-speed camera with a frame rate greater than or equal to 10,000 frames⁄second will be required. For studies of the wettability and permeability of the ink used in the ink-jet printer to its media, the microscopic contact angle meter can provide a significant amount of data.

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A large amount of eggshells are discarded by the food industry, and their disposal by incineration or landfill involves considerable costs. In order to utilize this bioresource efficiently, the use of eggshell calcium carbonate (ECC) as a coating pigment for ink-jet paper was investigated. ECC was found to have high adsorption ratio for magenta dye, which suggests that it can be a complementary pigment for silica that has widespread commercial use. A trial ink-jet paper prepared from ECC particles less than 1μm in diameter exhibited a higher color density than those prepared from particles with a diameter of 5μm. The higher color density is presumably because of slow ink penetration into the paper and higher lateral spread on the paper surface, which result from the packed structure associated with the broad particle size distribution and high dispersibility of the EEC particles. Further, in the printing test, ECC particles less than 1μm in diameter led to severe bleeding, as implying the same mechanism as for the higher color density. However, the ECC-coated surface exhibited higher hydrophilicity than those coated with precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC); the higher hydrophilicity is a result of a lower contact angle with water. Consequently, the formation of microaggregates of ECC particles would be expected to enhance the color density and lead to low bleeding.

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