Overview and Recent Progress of Electrophotographic Technologies

To understand electrophotography, the history and the current position and roles in print eco-system is discussed. For technologies, an overview of the electrophotographic system is explained at first. Afterwards, the direction and the recent progress of the electrophotographic technologies are described. The category "light production" is the mainstream of recent electrophotographic printers. The direction for the growth is improvement to higher speed range for heavy duty use with low cost in the color electrophotographic printers. Recent progresses of the technologies are mainly achieved toward higher image quality and stability and extending media varieties. They are supported by "vertical cavity surface emitting laser," high-speed image processing technologies, longer and flat nip fusers, and transfer technologies for deep patterned indented surface media, thick and thin media, and envelop. As a result, electrophotography catches up with the offset printing in transaction use. These improvements will continue in the future. Using the advantage of antiweatherability, label and/or package printing are expected for the future electrophotography. (C) 2019 Society for Imaging Science and Technology.