Adhesion and anti-adhesion of viscous fluids on solid surfaces—A study of ink transfer mechanism in waterless offset printing

The transfer of a liquid under dynamic conditions onto a solid surface relies on wetting/adhesion under transient external forces. We found the phenomena associated with forced wetting and dewetting could not be explained by thermodynamic approaches which are based on surface energy and work of adhesion. This is because these approaches do not take account of the dynamic nature of the forced wetting and dewetting. This study uses ink transfer in waterless offset printing as an example to present a new understanding of adhesion and anti-adhesion of a liquid to a solid surface under dynamic conditions. We focus on the adhesion strength, instead of work of adhesion, at the ink–plate interface and experimentally quantified ink adhesion forces on the image and non-image areas of the printing plate. Based on adhesion force measurements we proposed that the formation of a weak boundary layer and/or the softening the non-image area due to solvent swelling are likely to be the mechanisms that causes ink refusal on the non-image area. AFM images are presented to show changes of the non-image surface before and after contacting with ink.

A weak (or soft) boundary layer on the non-image area rejects ink adhesion to this area. Printing force measurement shows the forces of ink transfer on the image area and ink refusal on the non-image area.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slide