Eco-Friendly Prepared Chemical Toner with Mixed Polyester Resin

Mixed polyester resins are fascinating materials in toner development because of the possibility to tune the toner properties by the simple mixing of different resin components. But the miscibility of two different components with quite different properties is still a challenge in both pulverized and chemical toners. For chemical toners, one alternative is to use organic media to dissolve both components, but this still generates environmental problems because of the increasing level of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) used on during production and released during usage. We have developed an eco-friendly process to reduce the amount of VOCs in toner. Every process was performed in a water-based condition. This technology was also applied to mixed polyester resins to cover a wide range of properties of Mw, Tg, T1/2, and gloss. The resulting eco-friendly prepared toner is tunable in its basic properties according to the balance of polyester resin components and has a low level of VOCs.