Dramatic Enhancements to the Ink-Jet Printability of Uncoated Paper, PaperCon '09 Conference

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This paper examines the benefits to ink-jet print optical densities and print qualities obtained through treatment of uncoated papers with calcium chloride and sizing agents. Each printer employed, Hewlett Packard’s Photosmart Pro B9180, Kodak’s ESP 3, and Epson’s Stylus C120, utilizes pigmented inks.

With each printer, adding calcium chloride greatly enhanced each aspect of print quality. For example, with the Hewlett Packard Photosmart Pro B9180 printer black optical density increased from 1.23 to 1.46 and with the Kodak ESP-3 printer the change was from 1.24 to 1.53. The role of an emulsion surface sizing agent on black optical density was quickly surpassed by the effect of calcium chloride. However the surface sizing played an important role in black print quality. Calcium chloride enhanced black print optical density and quality without the usual trade-off with black-on-yellow print quality. The level of an internal sizing agent, alkyl succinic anhydride, was shown to be unimportant.