Inkjet print quality: The role of polyvinyl alcohol in speciality CaCO₃ coatings

The aim of this work is to clarify the controlling role of polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) as a binder in the formation of coating and pore structure and how it affects the high-speed inkjet image quality formation. The results show that the pigment type and the binder amount have a large interactive effect on pore structure formation. The studied PVOH can transfer into the intra-particle pores of pigments, and the swelling of PVOH closes up the pores which have diameters of ∼30 nm, but this depends on the amount of binder used. The optical properties of the whole paper, not just the coating, are the most important regarding print density, but the properties of the coating layer itself have a dominant effect when considering the ink bleeding.