Claims
- 1. An electrostatic image developing toner comprising a coloring agent and toner particles, said toner particles have a matrix-domain structure, and the average of the area of a Voronoi polygon formed by the perpendicular bisecting line between the centers of gravity of domains adjacent to each other in said matrix-domain structure is from 20,000 to 120,000 mm2, and the variation coefficient of the area of said Voronoi polygon is less than or equal to 25 percent.
- 2. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein the average of the area of said Voronoi polygon formed by the perpendicular bisecting line between the centers of gravity of domains adjacent to each other in said matrix-domain structure is from 40,000 to 100,000 mm2, and the variation coefficient of the area of said Voronoi polygon is les than or equal to 20 percent.
- 3. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein the average of the area of said Voronoi polygon formed by the perpendicular bisecting line between the centers of gravity of domains adjacent to each other in said matrix-domain structure is from 20,000 to 120,000 mm2, and the number ratio of the domain, which forms said Voronoi polygon having an area of at least 160,000 mm2, is from 3 to 20 percent of the total number of domains.
- 4. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein the average of the area of a Voronoi polygon formed by the perpendicular bisecting line between the centers of gravity of the domains in the exterior of a 1,000 nm radius circle having the center of gravity in the cross-section of said toner particle as the center is smaller than the average of the area of a Voronoi polygon formed by the perpendicular bisecting line between the centers of gravity of said domain in the interior of said circle.
- 5. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein of Voronoi polygons formed by the perpendicular bisecting line between the centers of gravity of the domains adjacent to each other in said matrix-domain structure, the number ratio of Voronoi polygons having an area of at least 160,000 nm2 which come into contact with the external circumference of said toner is from 3 to 20 percent of the total number of said domains.
- 6. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner particle is comprised of a matrix-domain structure and has a region comprising no domain portion of a length of 500 to 6,000 nm as well as a height of 100 to 200 nm along the circumference of the cross-section of said toner particle.
- 7. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said domains are comprised of ones having different luminance.
- 8. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said resin forms the portion corresponding to said matrix, and said coloring agent forms the portion corresponding to said domain.
- 9. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said coloring agent is prepared employing a water-dampened coloring agent paste.
- 10. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner has a number variation coefficient of less than or equal to 27 percent in the number particle size distribution, and also has a variation coefficient of the shape factor is less than or equal to 16 percent.
- 11. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner is comprised of toner particles without corners of at least 50 percent by number, and has a number variation coefficient in the number particle size distribution of less than or equal to 27 percent.
- 12. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner is comprised of toner particles having a shape factor of 1.2 to 1.6 of at least 65 percent by number, and has a particle number variation coefficient, in the number particle size distribution, of less than or equal to 27 percent.
- 13. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner is comprised of toner particles having a number average particle diameter of 3 to 9 μm.
- 14. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner has a sum (M) of at least 70 percent, wherein said sum (M) consists of relative frequency (m1) of toner particles which are included in the most frequent class and relative frequency (m2) of toner particles which are included in the second most frequent class in the histogram which shows the particle size distribution based on the number of particles, which is drawn in such a manner that regarding said toner, when the particle diameter of toner particles is represented by D (in μm), natural logarithm ln D is taken as the abscissa, and said abscissa is divided into a plurality of classes at an interval of 0.23.
- 15. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner is prepared by salting-out/fusing resinous particles prepared via a process of polymerizing a polymerizable monomer and coloring agent particles.
- 16. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said resinous particles are prepared by polymerizing a polymerizable monomer in a water based medium.
- 17. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner particles are prepared by aggregating and fusing resinous particles and coloring agent particles in a water based medium.
- 18. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner particles are prepared by salting out/fusing resinous particles prepared by a multi-step polymerization method and coloring agent particles.
- 19. The electrostatic image developing toner of claim 1, wherein said toner particles are comprised of a resinous layer which is formed by fusing resinous particles comprising a crystalline material, toner particles, and resinous particles comprised of a resin having a lower molecular weight than the resin of said resinous particles, employing a salting-out/fusion method.
- 20. In an image forming method comprised of processes in which an electrostatic latent image, formed on a photoreceptor, is visualized employing a developer, and said visualized image is transferred onto a recording medium and thermally fixed, an image forming method wherein said thermal fixing is carried out employing a fixing unit having a looped belt-shaped film.
- 21. The image forming method of claim 20, wherein an electrostatic latent image is formed utilizing digital exposure onto a photoreceptor.
Priority Claims (2)
Number |
Date |
Country |
Kind |
2000-338881 |
Nov 2000 |
JP |
|
2001-079671 |
Mar 2001 |
JP |
|
Parent Case Info
[0001] This application is a continuation-in-part application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/011,634.
Continuation in Parts (1)
|
Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
10011634 |
Nov 2001 |
US |
Child |
10201403 |
Jul 2002 |
US |