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Hitting "print" is easy. Getting a perfect printout is not. All too often, inkjet printers spew out smudged or smeared pages. Now a new study concludes that the likeliest culprit is the gloopiest ink.
Inkjet printers are named for their tiny nozzle that squirts droplets of ink onto the paper. Ideally, the ink forms a perfect round droplet as it launches from the inkjet, hitting the paper right on target. But droplet formation is affected by ink properties including density, surface tension and viscosity, which is the measure of resistance to flow, or "gloopiness." And if the droplets aren't just right, a splotch appears instead of a crisp line of text.
Scientists use a ratio called the Z number to describe the surface tension and viscosity of a particular ink. Inks with a lower Z are more viscous, while inks with a higher Z have more surface tension, explains study coauthor Jooho Moon of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea.
Recent theoretical work predicted that quality printing inks would have Z values between 1 and 10. But the new research suggests the best droplets form from inks with Z values between 4 and 14, Moon and his colleagues report in the March 3 Langmuir. That means that of the inks now in common use, the less viscous, more free-flowing ones print better.
By capturing images of the droplets of different types of lab-made inks, up to a Z score of 17, the researchers found that droplets with Z scores above 14 often break into two ink drops while droplets with values below 4 stick to the inkjet instead of launching properly.
"A kind of balance is what is needed for the most printable inks," explains materials scientist Damien Vadillo of the University of Cambridge in England.
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