Inks

An ink is a liquid containing various pigments and/or dyes used for coloring a surface to produce an image or text. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen or brush or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing. more...

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Ink is a complex medium, comprising solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants, solubilizers, particulate matter, fluorescers, and other materials. The components of inks serve many purposes; the ink’s vehicle, colorants, and other additives are used to control flow, thickness, and appearance of the ink when dry.

Types of ink

Early varieties include Egyptian ink, various natural dyes made from metals, the husk or outer covering of beans or seeds, and sea creatures like the squid (known as sepia). India ink is black and originated in Asia. Iron gall ink was used by many of the old masters for drawing. Walnut ink is erroneously thought to have also been used by old masters, however, there is no proof of this. Walnut Inks, if they were used, would have faded fairly quickly and would therefore be unsuitable.

Pigmented inks

Pigmented inks contain other agents that ensure adhesion of the pigment to the surface and prevent it from being removed by mechanical abrasion. These materials are typically referred to as resins (in solvent-based inks) or binding agents (in water-based inks).

Pigmented inks are advantageous when printing on paper because the pigment stays on the surface of the paper. This is desirable because more ink on the surface means that less ink needs to be used to create the same intensity of color.

Pigments are the main components of ink, containing the different colors. The size of the pigment is very important for the ability to diffuse in the solution inks. Qualities such as hue, saturation, and brightness or lightness are inherent in the ink, and vary dependent on the source and type of pigment.

Dyes in inks

Dye-based inks are generally much stronger than pigment-based inks and can produce much more color of a given density per unit of mass. However, because dyes are dissolved in the liquid phase, they have a tendency to soak into paper, thus making the ink less efficient and also potentially allowing the ink to bleed at the edges of an image, producing poor quality printing.

To circumvent this problem, dye-based inks are made with solvents that dry rapidly or are used with quick-drying methods of printing, such as blowing hot air on the fresh print. Other methods include harder paper sizing and more specialized paper coatings. The latter is particularly suited to inks used in non-industrial settings (which must conform to tighter toxicity and emission controls), such as inkjet printer inks. Another technique involves coating the paper with a charged coating. If the dye has the opposite charge, it is attracted to and retained by this coating, while the solvent soaks into the paper. Cellulose, the material that paper is made of, is naturally charged, and so a compound that complexes with both the dye and the paper's surface will aid retention at the surface. Such a compound in common use in ink-jet printing inks is polyvinyl pyrrolidone.

Read more at Wikipedia.org