Enhancement of Solid Content in AEO_9/Alcohol/Alkane/Water Reverse Microemulsion Ceramic Inks

Some shortcomings, such -as high viscosity, low conductivity and low solid content etc were found for the AEO9/alcohol/alkane/water system reverse microemulsion ceramic inks prepared in the previous paper. Therefore, a small amount of alcohol and Na2CO3 were added to adjust and improve the physicochemical properties to meet the demands of continuous ink-jet printers. It was found that the addition of 1%-2% alcohol resulted in a reduction in viscosity to 11mPa·s. The composition of ceramic inks with the bicontinuous structure was designated according to the phase diagram. The change of water dissolving amounts was investigated with the objective of enhancing them. The solid load of 2.54% in the ink was realized experimentally. Unfortunately, the physicochemical properties were still not satisfactory. A small amount of Na2CO3 was added to improve them. It was revealed from the experiment that the viscosity was below 18mPa·s and the conductivity was 100mS/m after Na2CO3 modification. The stability of the modified ceramic inks was excellent and the particle size in the ink was lower than 10nm. The transparency of the ink was lowered a little compared with that of ordinary reverse microemulsion ceramic ink. The TEM observation demonstrated this ink had an obvious feature of bicontinuous structure.