JPS61185489A - Thermal transfer recording medium - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To increase durability and weatherproof properties of images of a recording medium by providing on a thermal recording medium, which has sublimating, vaporizing or fluxing migrating properties, on a substrate, a dye deactivating resin layer which changes a dye in an ink layer deactivated or stabilized. CONSTITUTION:A heat transferring dye which has eutectic temperatures of 50-140 deg.C of a heat fusion ink is preferable. Any dyes such as direct dye, acid dye, basic dye, sulfer dye, vat dye, azoic dye, oil dye, dispersion dye of heat sublimation type and etc. may be used. For deactivation or stabilization of dyes, cellulose group resin, etc. are used for the purposes. If a thermal head 4 is pressed from the side of a supporting member 1, the resin 7 in dye deactivation resin layer 3 moves together with a dye 6 to the surface of the recording sheet 5 and suppresses activity of the dye 6 and stabilizes it.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION Technical Field The present invention relates to a thermal transfer recording medium in which a recorded image is formed by sublimating, vaporizing or melting dye by heating with a thermal head or the like.

PRIOR ART Heat-melting type heat-sensitive recording media containing colored pigments and wax as main components have been used for a long time, and are still used today.
It is difficult to achieve degree gradation or dot diameter size modulation, and in order to obtain an image with good halftone reproduction, an area gradation method such as a dither method or a density pattern method must be used. If such a method is adopted, a drawback arises in that the resolution of the image is reduced due to the matrix size of nxn.

Therefore, recently, various proposals have been made for heat-sensitive recording media that improve halftone reproduction by using dye-based and wax-based heat-sensitive recording media instead of pigment-based and wax-based heat-sensitive recording media.

(Unexamined Japanese Patent Publications No. 59-64391, No. 78893, No. 10
(See No. 9389, No. 67080, No. 67090, No. 67091, etc.) However, since these products use dyes, the gradation of images is improved compared to pigments, but on the other hand, weather resistance and
The drawback is that it has poor solderability.

Purpose The present invention aims to improve the fastness and weather resistance of images on thermal transfer recording media using dyes.

Structure The present invention relates to a thermal transfer medium in which an ink layer containing a backing, vaporizable, or melt-transferable thermal transferable dye is formed on a substrate, and a dye that deactivates or stabilizes the dye in the ink layer. This is a thermal transfer recording medium characterized by being provided with a non-activated resin layer.

As the heat-transferable dye used in the present invention, a heat-melting ink having a eutectic temperature of 50 to 140°C is preferably used.

As such dyes, all of the following specifically listed direct dyes, acid dyes, basic dyes, sulfur dyes, vat dyes, azoic dyes, oil dyes, heat sublimable disperse dyes, etc. can be used. .

(1) Direct dyes: Direct Sky Blue, Direct Black W, etc.

[21n dyes; tartrazine, acid violet 6B1 acidophore 3G, etc.

[3] Basic dyes: safranin, auramine, crystal violet, methylene blue, rhodamine B1 Victoria blue B, etc.

(4) Sulfur dye; Sulfur Brilliant Green 4G, etc.

(9 vat dyes; indanstremble, etc.

(61 azoic dye; naphthol A8 etc.

(7) Oil dye; Nigrosine, Spirit Black EB
, Varifast Orange 3206, Oil Black 21
5th grade.

Butter Yellow, Sudan Blue, Oil Red 81
0-Damine (8) Heat-sublimable disperse dye (8-I) Monoazo disperse dye: Disbird's First Yellow G1 Disbird's First Yellow 5G1
Days Birds First Yellow SR, Days Birds Red R, etc.

(8-II) Anthraquinone disperse dye; Disbird's First Violet OR, Disbird's First Violet B1 Divers Blue Extra, Disbird's First Brilliant Blue B, etc.

<am> Nitrodiphenylamine disperse dye; Disbirds Fast Yellow RR.

Disbirds First Ye 0-GL etc.

Examples of dye deactivating resins that deactivate or stabilize the above dyes include the following.

Dye type Resin 1 Cellulose resin 2 Polyamide resin 3 Acrylic resin 4 Cellulose and vinyl resin 5 Cellulose resin 6 Cellulose resin 7 Styrene, acrylic, vinyl chloride, polyester resin 8 Polyester and acrylic resin Transfer of the present invention In the medium, a conventional binder is used to firmly bond and support each layer to the support, but preferably a binder with a softening point or melting point of 50 to 130
℃ thermoplastic or thermosetting resins are used. Examples of such resins include polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, petroleum resin, acrylic resin, vinyl chloride resin, vinyl acetate resin, vinylidene chloride resin, polyvinyl alcohol, cellulose resin, polyamide, polyacetal, polycarbonate, polyester, fluororesin, Examples include silicone resin, natural rubber, chlorinated rubber, butadiene rubber, olefin rubber, phenol resin, urea resin, melamine resin, epoxy resin, polyimide, and the like. When forming a coating layer on a support using these resins, a solvent coating method, a hot melt coating method, an aqueous emulsion coating method, etc. are employed as the coating method.

In the present invention, in order to further improve the gradation of the image, it is also possible to have a stone wall structure or a network structure of needle-like dye crystals.

To explain the structure and function of the recording medium of the present invention with reference to the drawings, FIG. 1 is a sectional view showing the layer structure of an example of implementation, in which a dye ink FfJ2 is provided on the surface of a support 1, and a dye inactivated A chemical resin layer 3 is provided. Then, when the thermal head 4 is pressed from the side of the support 1 against the 5th side of the recording sheet, dye ink is released by heat as shown in FIG. The dye 6 in I2 migrates to the fifth side of the recording sheet, and at the same time, the resin 1 of the dye-deactivated resin layer 3 also migrates to the fifth side of the recording sheet together with the dye 6. The dye 6 and the dye non-activating resin 7 suppress and stabilize the activity of the dye through coexistence (contact), eutectic reaction, chemical reaction, or the like.

FIG. 3 shows another embodiment, in which the dye ink layer 2 and the dye non-activating resin layer 3 are arranged in the opposite way to that in FIG. 1. Therefore, in the transferred image after recording, the positions of the dye 6 and the dye deactivation resin 7 are reversed, as shown in FIG.

Next, examples will be described.

Example 1 A composition consisting of a monoazo disperse dye; 10 parts of Disbird's Red R and 2 parts of a polysulfone resin was thoroughly dispersed in a ball mill together with 100 parts of methylene chloride. After coating on the polyester film surface and drying, approximately 2
A dye ink layer having a thickness of μ was formed.

Next, 2 parts of polyester resin and 100 parts of dichloroethane
The mixture was mixed and dissolved and coated on the dye ink layer and dried to form a dye non-activated resin layer with a thickness of about 0.5 μm.

The transfer recording medium obtained as described above was superimposed on a recording sheet, and an image was recorded from the back side of the transfer recording medium using a thermal head with varying heating energy, and a red image was formed. As a weather resistance test, this recorded image was irradiated with a fade meter for 3 hours, and the image density was only about 12% lower.

Comparative Example 1 A transfer recording medium was prepared in the same manner as in Example 1 except that the dye non-activated resin layer was not provided, and when the same test was carried out, the image density was reduced by 45%.

Example 2 [)iamira YellowGGL (Mitsubishi Kasei)
A composition consisting of 10 parts of styrene resin and 2 parts of styrene resin was thoroughly dispersed in a ball mill with 100 parts of methylene chloride, and then coated on the surface of a 6 μm thick polyester film as a support using a wire bar and dried to give a total of about 2 parts.
A dye ink layer having a thickness of μ was formed.

Next, 3 parts of ethyl cellulose and 10 parts of ethyl alcohol
0 parts were mixed and dissolved, coated on the dye ink layer, and dried to form a dye non-activated resin layer with a thickness of about 0.4 μm.

The transfer recording medium obtained as described above was superimposed on a recording sheet, and an image was recorded using a thermal head from the back side of the transfer recording medium by changing heating energy, and a yellow image was formed. As a weather resistance test, this recorded image was irradiated with a fade meter for 3 hours, and the image density was only 8% lower.

Comparative Example 2 A transfer recording medium was prepared in the same manner as in Example 2, except that the dye non-activated resin layer was not provided, and the same test was conducted. As a result, the image 11 degree was reduced by 35%.

Example 3 D 1acryl Suara B 1ack
A composition consisting of 10 parts of RSL (Mitsubishi Kasei) and 30 parts of a 10% polyvinyl alcohol solution was sufficiently dispersed in a ball mill, and then applied to the surface of a 6μ thick polyester film as a support using a wire bar. The coating was applied and dried to form a dye ink layer with a thickness of about 2 μm.

Next, 2 parts of acrylic resin and 100 parts of toluene were mixed and dissolved, and the mixture was coated on the dye ink layer and dried to give an approximately 0.0.
A 5 micron thick layer of dye non-activated resin was formed.

The transfer recording medium obtained as described above was superimposed on a recording sheet, and when an image was recorded from the back side of the transfer recording medium using a thermal head with varying heating energy, a black image was formed. As a weather resistance test, this recorded image was irradiated with a fade meter for 3 hours, and the image quality decreased by only 10%.

Comparative Example 3 A transfer recording medium was prepared in the same manner as in Example 3 except that the dye non-activated resin layer was not provided. When the same test was conducted, the image density was reduced by 30%.

Example 4 Using the same material formulation as in Example 3, a dye-deactivated resin layer was first provided on a polyester film as a support, and then a dye ink layer was formed.

In this case as well, a weather resistance test was conducted in the same manner, and a good result was obtained in which the image density decreased by 15%.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Fig. 1 is an explanatory diagram of one embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing the state of transfer recording, Fig. 3 is an explanatory diagram of another embodiment, and Fig. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing the state of transfer recording. FIG. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1...Support, 2...Dye ink layer, 3...Dye deactivated resin layer 4...Thermal head, 5...Recording sheet, 6...
・Dye, 7...Resin.

Claims (1)

[Claims] In a thermal transfer medium in which an ink layer containing a sublimable, vaporizable, or melt-transferable thermal transfer dye is formed on a substrate, the dye in the ink layer is deactivated or stabilized. A thermal transfer recording medium characterized by being provided with a dye non-activated resin layer.