Printing Technology Continues to Innovate Nanomaterials to Move "New World"

A limited edition electronic ticket card printed with nanotechnology has been applied at the Beijing APEC conference

From subtraction to addition

One of the things that printers are proud of is the invention of printing, which promotes the development of civilization in China and even the world. In principle, printing has two stages: one is the physical imaging stage and the other is the chemical imaging stage. Moveable type printing is based on physical imaging, and laser photodisplacement is exposure imaging after the development of photochemical and photographic technologies.

Using an image metaphor to describe, you can compare printing with eating. The first stage is "having food and eating." The printing of movable type solves this problem, and its appearance has made the distribution of books popular. The second stage is “eat well”, that is, after the laser photocopying technology appears, the traditional black-and-white printing can become color printing. So where do we go now? It should be "to eat healthy" and it is to be green. Whether it is type printing or laser photocopying, it is a subtraction process. For example, a laser photocopying process is similar to the process of a traditional film photographing. First, the image to be printed is exposed on a photographic film, and then the final image is formed after rinsing. The sensitization and the rinsing process can produce very large pollution. Can it not be possible to turn subtracting into addition? The control of surface hydrophilicity and lipophilicity of nanomaterials can solve this problem well.

Want to do addition, which also involves some problems. The first problem is that the contrast between the graphic area and the blank area is large. This requires the use of nanomaterials to make the graphic area oleophilic and make the blank area hydrophilic. The second problem is that ordinary ink hits the plate quickly and wears out. How to increase the durability also requires nanomaterials to solve. Up to now, the application of this addition is actually changing the photo-sensing imaging, which is, in principle, the most environmentally friendly technology.

Innovative production methods

Furthermore, if we combine printing technology with nano-materials, we can change many of the traditional methods of mass production, pollution, and consumption. For example, most of the colors in life come from pigments and dyes. China's printing and dyeing industry has the world's largest output, but in the production process, the production of one ton of dye will produce 700 tons of wastewater, and each ton of dye wastewater will pollute 20 tons of clean water, which shows that the pollution is very serious. However, through nanotechnology, the problem of pollution in the manufacturing process can be fundamentally solved. For example, a beautiful butterfly whose color is not represented by the pigment but is produced by the nanostructure. If it can be printed out, it can solve the pollution problem in the printing and dyeing industry.

In fact, this is an optical semiconductor. Scientists all over the world are studying it. Who can mass it and industrialize it? This is the challenge that the world faces. However, we solved this problem by synthesizing different nanoparticles and controlling the size of the nanoparticles to obtain different colors. This color does not fade and the gloss is very good. After this technology is solved, it can provide a new type of smart packaging material. For example, Procter & Gamble’s annual sales are 84 billion U.S. dollars, of which 16 billion U.S. dollars are spent on packaging. However, photonic crystal materials can also achieve beautiful and colorful effects, and they can be produced in such a package at the price of 1/5 of the original price. bottle.

Solving international problems

In information technology, there is a basic unit called a printed circuit board that is exposed and etched on photographic film to leave what is needed. However, more than 80% of the copper in this process will be corroded and discharged underground after corrosion, which will seriously damage the ecological environment. However, if these metals are made into nano-particles and made into conductive inks and printed circuits are formed, can it be achieved? Something has already been demonstrated. During the APEC period in 2014, all the wires and circuits in the 6 gates of Menkali were produced through nanotechnology. This is the contribution of Chinese scientists to the advancement of nanotechnology.

Can you make it, why isn't it earlier? In fact it is an international scientific and technological problem. One of them is the coffee ring effect. When coffee spreads on solids, it forms a diffused ring, and hollows in the middle cause uneven density. The diffusion of ink droplets cannot avoid the effect of the coffee ring. It is generally believed that the ink from the nozzle of the printer will be larger than the orifice, because it is a diffusion process, but we have used commercial printers to print an order of magnitude smaller ink than the orifice. This is a very big breakthrough. It is our hope to be the smallest point in the world, the finest line, and the most flat surface. We must also propose three laws of green printing that require only calculations and do not need to do experiments to know what the results are.

Today's printing is not a traditional concept of printing and printing, but an advanced green manufacturing method. It not only solves the pollution problems of traditional industries, but also solves the difficulties of many industries. The key is to look outside and cannot be closed. We must believe that the Chinese people may make greater contributions to the world in this area.