Ink-jet printing is a manufacturing process technology that directly prints a digitalized design pattern onto a substrate using a fine ink jetting system. In this study, environmentally friendly yellow aqueous ceramic ink is synthesized by mixture of distilled water, yellow ceramic pigment and additives for ink-jet printing. The graft polymer, which combines electrostatic repulsion and steric hindrance mechanism, is used as a surfactant for dispersion stability of aqueous ceramic ink. Synthesized ceramic ink with graft polymer surfactant shows better dispersion stability than did ceramic ink with PAA surfactant; synthesized ink also shows desirable ink-jet printability with the formation of a single ink droplet during printability test. Finally, ceramic ink printed on glass substrate and ceramic ink with graft polymer surfactant shows a high contact angle without surface treatment on glass substrate. Consequently, it is confirmed that the ceramic ink with graft polymer surfactant can achieve high printing resolution without additional surface treatment process.

In this study, ZrO2 ceramic ink was formulated for additive manufacturing three dimensional structure using dispenser printing technique. Ceramic ink with various ZrO2 loading (30, 40, 50vol%) was prepared to evaluate their rheological properties and printability. High ZrO2 loading ZrO2 ceramic ink showed higher elastic modulus and improved shape retention, when the ceramic ink was printed and sintered at 1450 oC for 1h. Microstructural analysis of printed ZrO2 objective indicated that high ZrO2 loading objective showed lower porosity and smaller pore size.

Ceramic ink-jet printing has become a widespread technology in ceramic tile and ceramicware industries, due to its capability of manufacturing products on demand with various designs. Generally, thermally stable ceramic inks of digital primary colors(cyan, magenta, yellow, black) are required for ink-jet printing of full color image on ceramic tile. Here, we synthesized an aqueous glass-ceramic ink, which is free of Volatile organic compound(VOC) evolution, and investigated its inkjet printability. CoAl2O4 inorganic pigment and glass frit were dispersed in aqueous solution, and rheological behavior was optimized. The formulated glass-ceramic ink was suitably jetted as single sphere-shaped droplets without satellite drops. After ink-jet printing and firing processes, the printed glass-ceramic ink pattern on glazed ceramic tile was stably maintained without ink spreading phenomena and showed an improved scratch resistance.

Ink-jet printing techniques with ceramic ink, which contains ceramic pigments as colorant, are in increasingly use in the ceramic industry. Generally, ceramic pigments that are produced by conventional method show diameters of several micrometers; these micrometer sized particles in the ink-jet printing process can cause undesirable behavior such as print head nozzle clogging. To prevent this problem, a particle size reduction process is required. In this study, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) pigments were synthesized via solid state method. Each pigment particle was milled to submicron size by an attrition mill. The effects of micronizing on the morphology, mechanical property, crystal structure and color property of the CMYK ceramic pigments were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), particle size analysis (PSA), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and CIE L*a*b*.

Ink-jet printing technology has been widely attractive due to its facility for direct and fine printing on various substrates. Recent studies have focused on expanding the application of ink-jet printing technology from general consumer use and design companies to the prototype production of precision parts and parts manufacturing. The use of ink-jet printing technology in decorated tableware, tiles, and other ceramic products also has many advantages. The printing process is fast and can be adaptable to various kinds of objects because there is no direct contact point between the printer and the substrates to be printed. For application to ceramic product decoration, inks containing highly dispersed inorganic nano-pigments are required. Here we report the synthesis and characterization of blue CoAl2O4 nanopigment for ink-jet printing. Blue ceramic ink based on the obtained CoAl2O4 pigment was prepared by dissolving CoAl2O4 pigment in a mixed solution of ethylene glycol and ethanol with volume ratios of 7:3 and 8:2, respectively, to obtain the appropriate viscosity for ink-jet printing. The ink solution contained 15 wt% of CoAl2O4 pigment and Cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide(CTAB) and Sodium dodecyl sulfate(SDS) as dispersive agents. The prepared blue ceramic ink was stably jetted and formed a sphere-shaped droplet from an ink-jet printer.