With the progress of science and technology, special printing inks are also changing rapidly. Conductive ink relies on a variety of electronic products towards high precision, high density, high reliability and the trend of development of fine technology, in recent years in mobile phones, toys, film switches, solar cells, far infrared heating film and radio frequency identification technology (RFID) and other industries are more and more widely used. The application of conductive ink direct printing method replaces the traditional process in many aspects and plays a milestone significance in the electronics industry.

Ink is an important material for printing, it is printed or inkjet pattern, text on the substrate. The ink consists of a main component and an auxiliary component, which are uniformly mixed and rolled repeatedly to form a viscous gelatinous fluid. It is composed of binder (resin), pigment, filler, auxiliary agent and solvent. Used for books, packaging and decoration, architectural decoration and electronic circuit plate printing. With the increase of social demand, ink varieties and production have also expanded and increased accordingly.

China produced ink very early. The predecessor of ink is loose ink. In China, black ink is made from pine smoke, gum (mainly cow skin glue, which acts as a bond for soot) and water. It was first used for writing and later for block printing. Ink in China's early development of rapid, after the Middle Ages, has been complacent, meet the traditional secret recipe, not very creative. At that time, European wood printing was also based on water, but the application was poor, so it was changed to oil. Later evolved into modern printing ink. The development of printing technology stimulates the development of the ink industry, and there are inks that adapt to various printing requirements and have many functions.

The main gap between domestic offset printing ink and similar foreign products

Although in recent years, China's offset printing ink production continues to increase, product quality level continues to improve, ink color varieties are increasing, but our production and industrial developed countries compared with similar products there is still a big gap, there are many shortcomings in quality, still can not meet the needs of today's printing, packaging, publishing and printing. The main differences are as follows:

1. The quality level and packaging level of domestic ink and similar products in the United States, Japan and Western European countries still have a certain gap;

2. There are still gaps in printing process requirements, high-speed adaptability, product quality consistency, ink stability and so on.

3. The development of special ink is in a slow state, which cannot meet the printing requirements of the rapid development of packaging and decoration, and some products are still in short supply. Such as offset waterless ink, offset light fast ink, non-aromatic offset sheet ink, non-aromatic thermosetting offset rotary ink, etc., still need to be further developed and improved in quality;

4. The four-color inks suitable for high-speed overprinting still need to be further improved in terms of high concentration, high transparency and brightness, and excellent overprinting.

5. Environmentally friendly offset printing ink varieties still need to be further developed.

Therefore, the urgent need to solve the problem of domestic ink production enterprises is to continuously stabilize and improve the quality of existing products, improve product packaging, improve the quality level of ink production raw materials, to achieve high quality and serialization of existing products, to meet market requirements, and constantly develop new products urgently needed in the market.

What is the difference between waterless offset printing ink and ordinary offset printing ink?

Waterless offset printing means that no water solution is used to moisten the plate, and the ink-repellent silicone rubber layer is used as the blank part of the printing plate, and the ink-friendly sensitive layer is used as the graphic part of the printing plate, so as to complete the flat offset printing process. From a microscopic point of view, the printing plate is not a lithograph, but a flat gravure plate, the intaglio part of the inking, so in the transfer process of ink, under the action of printing pressure, the expansion of the printing dot is smaller than the water offset printing, which can better realize the true representation of the text.

In the waterless offset printing process, the waterless offset printing ink is required to have greater cohesion, and the adsorption force between the ink and the silicone rubber layer is as low as possible to ensure that the blank part is not inking (to prevent dirty version).

The composition of anhydrous offset printing ink is similar to that of ordinary offset printing ink, but there are also some differences.

The same place is that benzidine yellow (P.Y.12), Lissol red (P.R.57:1), phthalocyanine blue BGS(P.B.15:3), carbon black and other pigments can be used, and the type of resin used is also the same, such as rosin modified phenolic resin can be used, and dry vegetable oil, fillers and additives need to be used.

The difference is that the anhydrous offset printing ink has some special requirements in the choice of resin and solvent, such as requiring the resin to have a higher relative molecular weight (hereinafter referred to as molecular weight), more branch chains, and the degree of cross-linking is greater, and the binder made by such resin has greater viscoelasticity, but because the solubility of such resin in vegetable oil and mineral oil generally decreases. This requires that the selection of resin and the design of the formula should be more careful in order to maintain the ink has a better transfer performance. In order to enable the ink to transfer smoothly from the inked graphic part to the substrate, it is also necessary to use some special solvents in the ink, such as polyoxyethylene ether, oleate and so on.

Ink market supply and demand pattern and industry status analysis

China's electronic ink market is growing rapidly, the overall growth of China's ink industry is stable, 2016-2020, China's ink industry market size increased from 33.16 billion yuan to 55.35 billion yuan, a compound annual growth rate of 10.8%. It is expected that with the rapid growth of the electronics industry, the ink industry is expected to continue to grow.

In the past 10 years, the two application areas of display and photovoltaic cells are becoming the new main application markets of conductive ink. In the future, the conductive ink market will develop into a very large industry, and relevant data show that by 2015, the total value of the conductive ink market is expected to reach $2.4 billion. Facing the huge market space, ink manufacturers flocked to the ink business, have begun to get involved in conductive ink business, hoping to get a share of the pie. In the future, targeted product development to meet specific market needs is a necessary competitive advantage for ink suppliers, and will also help promote the progress of conductive ink market.

The number of ink enterprises in China is 1,200, mostly small and medium-sized enterprises, and the sum of sales volume of the top five ink enterprises in the market is less than 50%, while the sum of output is less than 25%. Chinese ink industry local enterprises are slightly less competitive. Among the top 5 enterprises in China's ink industry, Di Aisheng, Hanghua Shares and Tianjin Dongyang all have overseas capital to participate in the holding, and Yangzixing belongs to Hong Kong Yip Chemical Group.

The upstream of the industrial chain is mainly in the petrochemical industry, of which the oil and resin based bonding materials account for about 70% of the overall raw materials, and the middle reaches are mainly various ink manufacturers, which can be mainly divided into printing ink enterprises and electronic ink enterprises according to the use of printing ink enterprises, including printing ink enterprises, New Oriental, Tianjin Dongyang and Tianlong ink, etc. Electronic ink including Hanghua shares and Guangxin materials, etc.; The downstream is mainly divided into two categories of printing industry and electronics industry enterprises.

The development trend of offset printing ink

Since the 1990s, due to the rapid development and popularity of color desktop platemaking systems, the international color printing market has undergone significant changes, and printed products are rapidly growing into color, with higher requirements for printing timings and quality. Therefore, offset printing, as an economical, efficient and flexible printing method for printing high-quality printed matter, will remain a major printing method for a long time.

Offset printing ink as one of the raw materials of offset printing, to meet the needs of multi-color, high speed, fast drying, no pollution, low consumption. We should absorb and learn from the advanced experience of foreign countries, face the current situation, find out the gap, catch up, maintain their own advantages, through the introduction of advanced technology and equipment, improve China's ink production and equipment level, technical level and product standardization, improve the quality of offset printing ink, to achieve high quality and serialization of China's ink industry and strive for the rapid development of China's ink industry.

Article source: Paper industry network, China Research network, pigment information