Determining mechanisms for ink-coating interactions in thermal transfer printed labels

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The industrial partner, GA International, has become a niche developer of label solutions for the biomedical (academic to commercial enterprises), automotive and fashion industries, making labels that withstand rigorous conditions such as extremely low temperatures to exposure to the most aggressive solvents. To expand in their current markets and to enter new ones, GA International has found it imperative to be more vertically oriented, with more control of the materials used in their label printing technologies. This project will seek to identify the ink/coating/substrate interactions that underly the performance of labels made by thermal transfer printing. For example, some suppliers provide coated substrates which in some cases, the printed ink will rub off easily while in other applications, the printed labels can withstand the harshest conditions of temperature/pressure or solvent. We will seek to thoroughly characterize model printed labels first, by observing the physical state of the coating via electron microscopy. Where permitted, chemical composition of the ink and coating will be done by NMR and infra-red spectroscopy (FTIR and attenuated total reflectance (ATR) for composition analysis/mapping. Using electron microscopy of cross-sections together with the surface analysis should provide clues as to how the ink interacts with the coating on the substrate. Then, model inks and coatings will be tested to verify the hypotheses formed from the analysis which will then position the partners to develop in-house inks and coatings that can be tailored to better serve existing customers while also pursuing new markets and applications.