Polymerized toner catches its next wave

It is touted for its abilities to increase digital imaging speed, reduce printing's environmental impact, reduce toner waste, render an image that competes with traditional ink-on-paper output and, most recently, achieve reliable and accurate color reproduction. Several equipment vendors consider

Polymerized toner is different. It is composed of miniature toner particles that are chemically induced to form a spherical shape around a particle of wax. The wax eliminates the need for traditional fuser oil in an electrophotographic print engine and allows the image to be fused onto the substrate at a lower temperature, thus reducing warm-up and imaging time. In addition to using less energy to image, manufacturers say the production of polymerized toner emits less carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and sulfur oxide into the environment.

Sometimes called "liquid dry toner," it provides print products with a glossy look and feel. Polymerized toner particles also are smaller and more uniform in shape than traditional toner particles, which are formed by being pulverized down to size (see Figure 1). Traditional toner has a particle size of about 10 microns. Polymerization technology enables the creation of 7-micron or smaller particles with uniform diameters and composition, for sharper and more reliable image reproduction.

Rapid development

According to Zeon Chemicals Inc., a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of Nippon Zeon Co. Ltd., the company developed its "micro-capsule" low-temperature-fixing toner in 1998, achieved increasing sales through Oki Data Co. Ltd. product implementations, and boosted its production of the toner in 2000. Zeon currently produces conventional pulverized resins and "next-generation" polymerized resins for use in OEMs' toner resin formulations. Zeon says its polymerized toners have a more uniform shape than their pulverized counterparts and, thus, provide improved definition in monochrome and color imaging applications.

Carmine Pugliese, director of Marketing for Canon U.S.A.'s Aftermarket Products division, says the company's S (for "Spherical") toner is in its third generation. He notes, "Manufacturers of this toner make a huge capital investment in the technology, but its production is less expensive than traditional toner." Canon also supplies S toner to Hewlett-Packard.

Konica Business Technologies released its first polymerized toner in 2002 for use in the company's midrange monochrome printers, and at ON DEMAND 2003 announced that its Simitri polymerized toners now are used in every toner-based device except those that print less than 20 ppm. Kevin Kern, Konica's v.p. of Product Development and Support, says, "Previously, color polymerized toner suffered from limitations of the overall gamut. The latest generation has resolved that, as can best be seen when printing red. It also achieves better halftone definition and solid fills using less toner per square centimeter." Kern says the company has placed more than 100,000 black-and-white products with polymerized toner technology and thousands of the latest print engines for color polymerized toners. Heidelberg USA also uses Simitri toners in the Digimaster product line.

Xerox Corp.'s DocuColor 2240 and 1632 were the first models launched with the company's EA ("Emulsion Aggregate") toner. Xerox launched the EA-toner-ready DocuColor 3535 line in February, 2003, built on the DocuColor 12 and DocuColor 2000 families of print engines. EA toner particles can be as small as 5.5 microns, due to Xerox's use of miniature plastic toner particles in a process that has been employed to make water-base latex paints. The particles are dispersed in a water-base emulsion formulated with wax and pigment charging agent particles. An aggregation step forms the emulsion into the final toner particles whose size can be controlled. This level of control over particle size allows polymerized toner to be created in higher yield than pulverized toners, which go through a screening process to match the desired size.

Cost considerations

If a copier/printer can operate at a lower fusing temperature when imaging with polymerized toner, it can conserve electricity. If polymerized toner can be applied in thinner layers to achieve high-quality image reproduction with less waste, consumable costs can be expected to take a dip. Konica currently prices Simitri similarly to conventional toner. Xerox has indicated a lower cost for EA toner vs. conventional toner. Pugliese says the cost of S toner depends on the Canon product using it and factors into the device's per-copy cost.

Here's the rub: Polymerized toner cannot be used in older electrophotographic equipment. It must be used in devices that are built specifically for its use. However, most manufacturers are offering competitive tradeout policies to owners of older equipment models seeking to implement polymerized toner technology.

Pugliese says most copier/printer users making a purchasing decision consider the high quality of polymerized toner printed products to be secondary to other factors. However, with the recent introduction of color polymerized toner and fierce competition between vendors, this technology is poised to attain a rapidly growing presence in the commercial print marketplace.