It may not be too common to hear about bio-based inks for printing, based from the recent years there were development and innovations with regards to this matter and most were considered good news. Through those innovations we've greatly improved and change the way we print, but the output still remains the same, even paper materials and other medias used for printing are still being consumed. How are those changes can be beneficial for the environment? Unless the chemicals particularly the inks and toners were improved, wherein a breakthrough to form environment-friendly pigments and toners or dyes had been developed.

According to some University researchers, a new form of color production has been developed. It was known as "physical color" named by the scientific community. Amazingly, this breakthrough allows the production of colour images without the need for inks, dyes or such chemicals.

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Professor, also the Head of the research lab, Jay Guo, explained:
        "Instead of coating a material with ink or chemicals, lab uses precisely inscribed grooves to yield an observable             color. Rather than using these chemicals, you could basically emboss the structure — a very ‘green’ print                         technology.”

Aside from the great fact that all printed products made through this innovation are all environment friendly, the problem of fading prints was also eliminated due to the advance coloring techniques applied. The process which is also quite similar to traditional color production was called "Structural Color". Traditionally, colors are produced when molecules absorb light, but with structural color, nano-cavities trap light at specific wavelengths depending on the depths of cavities.

The structure of cavities allows them to display colors, thus in a way it can be called a physical effect since it is the structure that is being altered rather using the molecules to create a chemical effect from which colors can possibly be produced.

This innovation is certainly a discovery worth to improve, the progress may lead to far more better technology that can be applied in several scientific fields. It seems that those eco-friendly toner cartridges and ink cartridges aren't all alone when it comes to promoting greener printing practices. I hope that this technology will soon be a reachable as well as an affordable printer consumables for the masses. For the full details about the research you may refer on this link.


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    Fiel Mori Promotes Eco Friendly stuffs and creating environment friendly articles for everyone @PrintGreen



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