Printing Characteristics of Full-Color Thermal Dye-Transfer Printers Using Semiconductor Laser Heat.

Experiments and numerical analysis were carried out to investigate the dye transfer phenomenon induced by semiconductor laser irradiation. First, the dye transfer process was modeled by considering heat conduction and molecular diffusion. The validity of this model was verified by a good agreement between experimental and numerical results. Second, two types of printing media composition were proposed and examined. The results showed that dye-donor-layer absorbing type, in which laser energy was converted into heat in the dye-donor layer, was more advantageous in terms of both higher resolution and higher dye-transfer efficiency in printing images as compared to the surface absorbing type, in which the energy conversion occurred on the surface of the base film. Finally, the case of a moving heat source was examined. In this case there existed an optimum moving velocity at which the amount of dye transferred showed the maximum.