Quantitative measurement of ink-blanket adhesion for contact transfer printing inks

In contact transfer printing, perfect ink transfer is determined by the difference of the surface energies between before and after a transfer step. To characterize the difference, one may record the adhesion force by separating the ink film from a substrate by an external force. Ink-blanket adhesion is one of the key properties to determine the printability because it affects all steps of the contact transfer printing. Only a certain range of ink-blanket adhesion properties can get a perfect transfer. Using a lab-made high-precision force measuring device, we developed a method to measure the adhesion force during detaching an ink film from a blanket. Ink-blanket adhesion can be evaluated quantitatively either as adhesion strength or adhesion energy from the measured adhesion force. Using the proposed method, we assessed the adhesion properties of commercial Ag nanoparticle ink varying the film thickness and the solid contents.