The research is motivated by needs of quality improvement in electrophotography and ink jet. From a materials perspective, understanding of the interactive phenomena between paper, inks and the process - the printing process or the end use processes - is a means towards this end. The overall goal of the research is to gain understanding of interactive phenomena by experimentation, characterization of print structure, measurement of print properties and result modeling. This paper focuses on the methodology in interaction and print structure research. In electrophotographic printing, paper, toner and the printing process interact mainly in the toner transfer and fusing steps. In ink jet printing, the corresponding process steps are drop impact and drying. In the use processes, environmental interactions cause aging and changes in print structure. The paper discusses and evaluates methods used in investigations of three-component interactions in electrophotographic printing and ink jet aging, and the resulting print structure. The former include electrical measurements of toner transfer and experimentation of contact and non-contact fusing in electrophotography. In both electrophotography and ink jet, spectroscopic methods, (FTIR and Raman techniques), are used for characterization of print structure.
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