Abstract:
Recently, xerographic printing technology has been rapidly developed with the use of
dry toner powders for a quality printing process. Polymeric resin, pigment, and charge
control agents are the basic components of toner powders. Carbon black is the primary
pigment used in toner preparation, which is obtained by incomplete combustion of
petroleum or organic materials. Magnetite is employed as the main charge control
agent, which is useful in generating triboelectric properties during the printing process.
This study aims to synthesize a toner powder through a physical pulverization process
that uses activated carbon black prepared from coconut shells and nanomagnetite
produced from the natural Buttala iron ore deposit in Sri Lanka. First, activated carbon
black was prepared from coconut shells through partial pyrolysis, followed by NaOH
activation. The nanomagnetite was synthesized from Buttala iron ores through a high
energy ball milling process. Styrene-acrylic copolymer was added as the polymer resin
in the toner preparation with prepared activated carbon black and nanomagnetite
according to 5:2:2 mass ratios. The resulted dry paste was pulverized to obtain micro
sized toner powders. This final product was morphologically, mineralogically, and
chemically investigated using Scanning Electron Microscopic (SEM) images, X-ray
diffractometer (XRD), and Fourier-Transformed Infrared (FTIR) spectroscope
respectively. The resulted XRD pattern shows major peaks related to magnetites, as in
the typical toner powder. The SEM images demonstrate the irregular shape particles
with rough surfaces, compared to other commercial toners. The particle size of the toner
powder diameter varies from 10 µm to 100 µm, and is comparable to commercial toner
particles, making it suitable as toner powder. The FTIR pattern reveals aromatic C=C
stretching, aliphatic C-H stretching, and C=O stretching as commercial toners.
Synthesized toner is expected to be used in the real printing process as it approaches the
characteristics of commercial toner powders.
