CLEANING BLADE FOR ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHY, PROCESS CARTRIDGE, AND ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS

• Main Authors: TERADA KENYA, UCHIDA TOSHIRO, MATSUDA HIDEKAZU, YAMAMOTO ARIHIRO
• Format: Patent
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: 19.05.2022
• Subjects: CINEMATOGRAPHY; ELECTROGRAPHY; ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHY; HOLOGRAPHY; MAGNETOGRAPHY; PHOTOGRAPHY; PHYSICS

To provide a cleaning blade that, even in a more accelerated process condition, can prevent the occurrence of turn-up and exhibit excellent cleaning performance even for a long-term use.SOLUTION: In a cleaning blade for electrophotography, a leading end face of an elastic member is scanned by using a scanning probe microscope; in a frequency distribution of luminance obtained from a phase image with 256 gradations, a 93rd gradation from the lowest gradation is determined as a threshold; a binarized image is created in which gradations equal to or more than the threshold are displayed in black and gradations less than the threshold are displayed in white; the binarized image is divided into 100 sections with sides of 2 μm. The coefficient of variation of the area ratio of white areas based on the area ratio of the white area in each section, the average value AM of the area ratios of the white areas, and the standard deviation Σ of the area ratios of the white areas is 20.00 or less. A value obtained by subtracting the Martens hardness HM2 of the elastic member from the Martens hardness HM1 at a specific position is larger than 0.10 N/mm2.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1 【課題】より高速化したプロセス条件下でも、めくれの発生を抑制し、長期の使用においても優れたクリーニング性能を発揮し得るクリーニングブレードを提供すること。【解決手段】弾性部材の先端面を、走査型プローブ顕微鏡を用いてスキャンし、２５６階調の位相像から得られる輝度の頻度分布において最低階調側から９３番目を閾値として、閾値以上が黒く、閾値未満が白く表されてなる二値化像を作成し、二値化像を２μｍ四方の１００区画に分け、各区画における白い領域の面積率、白い領域の面積率の平均値ＡＭ、白い領域の面積率の標準偏差Σに基づく白い領域の面積率の変動係数が２０．００以下であり、弾性部材の特定位置のマルテンス硬度ＨＭ１からマルテンス硬度ＨＭ２を引いた値が０．１０Ｎ／ｍｍ２より大きいことを特徴とする電子写真用クリーニングブレード。【選択図】図１