Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

Fujifilm Business Innovation Corp.

Yuka Kawamoto

Daisuke Ishizuka

Noriyuki Mizutani

Daisuke Tano

Kotaro Yoshihara

Narumasa Sato

Erina Saito

Yoshiteru Yamada

Kenta Shingu

Asafumi Fujita

Yuki Takamiya

Yusuke Watanabe

Takahisa Tatekawa

Norimasa Ozora

An image forming apparatus includes an electrostatic image developer including a toner including toner particles, the toner particles including a release agent, an amount of the release agent present in a region that extends 800 nm below surfaces of the toner particles being 70% or more of the total amount of the release agent included in the toner particles, the release agent having a melting temperature of 65° C. or more and 80° C. or less; a member that is to be cleaned; and a cleaning blade arranged to come into contact with an outer peripheral surface of the member, the cleaning blade being capable of removing the toner adhered on a surface of the member, the cleaning blade including a contact portion arranged to come into contact with the member, the contact portion including a polyurethane, the contact portion having a hardness of 85° or more and 95° or less and a plastic deformation power of 12% or less, a Si content at a surface of the contact portion being 15 atm % or more.

Image forming apparatus

An image forming apparatus includes an image holder; a charging unit that charges a surface of the image holder; an electrostatic charge image forming unit that forms an electrostatic charge image on the charged surface of the image holder; a developing unit that accommodates an electrostatic charge image developer containing a toner having toner particles and that develops an electrostatic charge image formed on the surface of the image holder as a toner image by the electrostatic charge image developer, in which a release agent present in a region within 800 nm from a surface of the toner particles is 70% or more of a release agent in entire toner particles and a melting temperature of the release agent is 65° C. or higher and 80° C. or lower; a transfer unit that transfers the toner image formed on the surface of the image holder to a surface of a recording medium; and a cleaning device having a cleaning blade that is brought into contact with and cleans an outer peripheral surface of the image holder and that is constituted of a polyurethane resin, in which a total amount of F and Si present within 200 nm from a surface of the cleaning blade, which is brought into contact with the image holder accounts for 75% or more of a total amount of F and Si present within 5 μm from the surface.

Image forming apparatus and image forming method

A belt cleaning blade has a contact part that is brought into contact with at least a surface of a belt which is a member to be cleaned, in which the contact part is configured of polyurethane rubber containing a hard segment and a soft segment, and in a surface of the contact part, a proportion Hoccupied by domains of the hard segment is 15.2% or more and 26.1% or less, and a proportion Hoccupied by an area of the domains of the hard segment having an area of 200 nmor more and 1,000 nmor less to a total area of the domains of the hard segment in the surface is 38.9% or more and 60.8% or less.

Belt cleaning blade, image forming apparatus, and transfer device

An image forming apparatus includes an image holder; a charging unit that charges a surface of the image holder; an electrostatic charge image forming unit that forms an electrostatic charge image on the charged surface of the image holder; a developing unit that accommodates an electrostatic charge image developer containing a toner having toner particles and that develops an electrostatic charge image formed on the surface of the image holder as a toner image by the electrostatic charge image developer, in which a release agent present in a region within 800 nm from a surface of the toner particles is 70% or more of a release agent in entire toner particles and a melting temperature of the release agent is 65° C. or higher and 80° C. or lower; a transfer unit that has a transfer opposing belt which comes into contact with a surface of the recording medium on an opposite side to a surface to which the toner image is transferred and that transfers the toner image formed on the surface of the image holder to the surface of the recording medium; and a cleaning device having a cleaning blade that is brought into contact with and cleans an outer peripheral surface of the transfer opposing belt, that is constituted of a polyurethane resin, and that has an indentation elastic modulus of 15 MPa or more and 35 MPa or less on a surface which is brought into contact with the transfer opposing belt, in which a total amount of F and Si present within 200 nm from the surface which is brought into contact with the transfer opposing belt accounts for 75% or more of a total amount of F and Si present within 5 μm from the surface.

An image forming apparatus includes an image holder; a charging unit that charges a surface of the image holder; an electrostatic charge image forming unit that forms an electrostatic charge image on the charged surface of the image holder; a developing unit that accommodates an electrostatic charge image developer containing a toner having toner particles and that develops an electrostatic charge image formed on the surface of the image holder as a toner image by the electrostatic charge image developer, in which a release agent present in a region within 800 nm from a surface of the toner particles is 70% or more of a release agent in entire toner particles and a melting temperature of the release agent is 65° C. or higher and 80° C. or lower; an intermediate transfer belt that has an outer peripheral surface to which the toner image is to be transferred; a primary transfer unit that has a primary transfer member performing primary transfer of the toner image formed on the surface of the image holder to the outer peripheral surface of the intermediate transfer belt; a secondary transfer unit that has a secondary transfer member performing secondary transfer of the toner image transferred to the outer peripheral surface of the intermediate transfer belt by the primary transfer to a surface of a recording medium; and a cleaning device having a cleaning blade that is brought into contact with and cleans the outer peripheral surface of the intermediate transfer belt and that has a two-layer structure including an edge layer and a back surface layer, in which the edge layer and the back surface layer are constituted of a polyurethane resin, a ratio (Hb/Ha) of a hardness Hb of the edge layer to a hardness Ha of the back surface layer is 0.84 or more and 0.93 or less, and a total amount of F and Si present within 200 nm from the surface of the cleaning blade, which is brought into contact with the intermediate transfer belt of the edge layer, accounts for 75% or more of a total amount of F and Si present within 5 μm from the surface.

A toner for developing an electrostatic charge image includes toner particles containing a binder resin; and an external additive containing silica particles, in which a coefficient of variation of a Si content is determined by determining the Si content in 0.5 &#x3bc;m&#xd7;0.5 &#x3bc;m square regions in a surface of each of the toner particles after performing a process of dispersing the toner in water and drying the dispersed toner, and an amount of change between this coefficient of variation of the Si content and a coefficient of variation of a Si content before the process ((coefficient of variation of Si content after process)&#x2212;(coefficient of variation of Si content before process)) is 0.05 or more and 0.60 or less.

Toner for developing electrostatic charge image, electrostatic charge image developer, and toner cartridge

An electrostatic charge image developer includes: a toner that includes toner particles which contain a polyester resin and a styrene (meth)acrylic resin and form a sea-island structure which includes a sea portion containing the polyester resin and an island portion containing the styrene (meth)acrylic resin on a surface of the toner particle, and has an exposure rate of the styrene (meth)acrylic resin in a range of from about 5 atom % to about 20 atom %; and an external additive, and a carrier whose fluidity and bulk density under environment of a temperature of 25&#xb0; C. and a humidity of 50% satisfy Expression: 65.0&#x2264;fluidity&#xd7;bulk density&#x2264;72.5.

Electrostatic charge image developer, developer cartridge, and process cartridge

An electrostatic image developing toner includes a toner particle and an external additive. The toner particle contains a binder resin and a release agent that includes a hydrocarbon wax. The binder resin includes a vinyl resin and a hybrid resin in which an amorphous resin unit other than polyester resins and a crystalline polyester resin unit are chemically bound together. The toner particle has hybrid resin domains and release agent domains. An average distance Lhyb from the surface of the toner particle to the centers of the hybrid resin domains and an average distance Lwax from the surface of the toner particle to the centers of the release agent domains satisfy Lwax&#x3c;Lhyb.

Electrostatic image developing toner, electrostatic latent image developer, and toner cartridge

An electrostatic-image developing toner includes a toner particle including a polyester resin and a styrene-(meth)acrylic resin, and an external additive including a poly[alkyl (meth)acrylate] particle. The amount of the poly[alkyl (meth)acrylate] particles is about 0.05 parts by mass or more and about 1.0 parts by mass or less relative to 100 parts by mass of the toner particle. The ratio D50/D50of the number-average diameter D50of the poly[alkyl (meth)acrylate] particles to the number-average diameter D50of the toner particles satisfies 0.03&#x2266;D50/D50&#x2266;0.15. The proportion of the styrene-(meth)acrylic resin in a resin component deposited on the surface of the toner particle is about 5 atom % or more and about 30 atom % or less as determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

Electrostatic-image developing toner, electrostatic-image developer, and toner cartridge

An electrostatic charge image developing toner includes a binder resin containing a polyester resin, a release agent, a colorant, and an aromatic aldehyde compound, the content of which exceeds 100 ppm and is equal to or smaller than 1200 ppm.

Electrostatic charge image developing toner, electrostatic charge image developer, and toner cartridge

An electrostatic-image developing toner contains toner particles. The toner particles contain a binder resin, a release agent, and a styrene-(meth)acrylic resin. The binder resin contains a polyester resin. About 70% or more of all release agent is present within about 800 nm from surfaces of the toner particles. The styrene-(meth)acrylic resin is present in an amount of about 5 to about 25 atomic percent of the resin components in the surfaces of the toner particles as determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

Electrostatic-image developing toner, electrostatic image developer, and toner cartridge

An electrostatic charge image developing toner includes toner particles including a binder resin that contains a copolymer formed by copolymerizing at least an aromatic vinyl monomer and an aliphatic unsaturated alkyl carboxylate ester, wherein a weight ratio of component M1 of the aromatic vinyl monomer and component M2 of the aliphatic unsaturated alkyl carboxylate ester in the copolymer satisfies the following expression (1), and a weight ratio of volatile component m1 of the aromatic vinyl monomer and volatile component m2 of the aliphatic unsaturated alkyl carboxylate ester, as measured by a headspace method, satisfies the following expression (2):0.10&#x2266;2/(1+2)&#x2266;0.30&#x2003;&#x2003;Expression (1)0.70&#x2266;2/(1+2)&#x2266;0.98&#x2003;&#x2003;Expression (2)wherein MW1 represents the weight of M1, MW2 represents the weight of M2, mw1 represents the weight of m1, and mw2 represents the weight of m2.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Yuka Kawamoto