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Innovation in european textile printing using uv-curable pigment inks and online-fixation in inkjet printing (HIGHTEX-INNOPRINT)

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Improved textile printing with inkjet technology

The textile printing industry has been using a broad range of fabrics, ink recipes and printing technologies for years in order to produce a variety of fine and colourful textiles. Pigment printing is the most important printing technology for textile materials as more than 50% of the fabrics are printed by this technique.

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The pigment printing technique needs no washing off and can be applied on every type of fabric. In recent years, Inkjet technology has provided new opportunities to the textile industry producing high quality printing with a beautiful range of colours. The HIGHTEX-INNOPRINT project concentrated on improving the formulations of pigmented inkjet inks for application in inkjet printing using UV-curable binders. An ink or coating containing a photoinitiator can dry in less than a second under a UV light. Photoinitiators are additives, which use energy from ultraviolet or visible light to induce polymerisation, or to cure, as in the case of coatings and inks. In the context of the project, photoinitiators were developed which were stable both in stress conditions and in normal storage. More specifically, stable water-based emulsions of photoinitiators were produced which cover the whole range of UV-Vis emissions used for curing UV ink formulations. The supplied water-based emulsions contain 30% photoinitiators and are easily incorporable into water-based acrylic formulations, demonstrating good stability. The research effort shed light on the development and application of photoinitiator emulsions, which facilitates the manufacturing UV-curable pigment inks for use in textile applications.

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