Analysis And Characterization Of Paper Surface Micro-topography

The properties of paper become more and more important with the extending of paperapplication, and paper have a vast potential for printed electronics. However, the topographyof paper is the one of the very important factor influencing the properties of paper basedprinted electronics. There is no scientific and comprehensive method to analysis andcharacterize the paper surface topography. As the result, researching on the paper surfacetopography is a valuable issue.This researching paper has studied paper topography from the aspects of topographycomplexity level, uniformity in horizontal and vertical direction. The fractal dimension wasused in characterizing the complexity level. The algorithm of fractal dimension of papersurface was optimized using Heron formula, and improved the precision. The optimizedalgorithm, differential box dimension method, double blanket cover method and structurefunction method were compared and got the result that the optimized project cover methodwas the best method in calculating paper fractal dimension. Paper surface topography has thefractal property, and a higher fractal dimension means a more complexity level topography.It is a great creation that using a height uniformity parameter characterizes thehomogeneity in horizontal direction, and combines the skewness and kurtosis as theparameters representing the changes in topography shape. A smaller height uniformityparameter means a more uniformity topography. Skewness was used in characterizing thedegree of symmetry relative to center plane. The shape of topography looks like plateau whenskewness smaller than0, while the topography has less peaks. The kurtosis represented thedistribution range.Studied the influence of vacuum aluminizing, coating and calendaring on paper surfacetopography. After vacuum aluminizing, fractal dimension, height uniformity, and skewnesshave decreased to2.21,0.78and-0.4853. As a result, vacuum aluminizing can decrease thecomplexity level and has benefit in height uniformity. Gloss coating can optimize thecomplexity level and the coating weight is an important factor. Fractal dimension has a littlechange when coating weight smaller than5g/m2, and will have a great decrease when coating weight bigger than5g/m2. The height uniformity level reach to the smallest value whencoating weight is5g/m2. After gloss coating, paper topography has less peak and has a narrowdistribution range. Calendering process has no influence on fractal dimension and kurtosis,however can decrease the height uniformity and skewness.The relationship between topography parameters and paper gloss was studied. As theresult, paper gloss has a good relativity with height uniformity and skewness, but has norelationship with fractal dimension and kurtosis, and the correlation coefficient is0.96. Thetopography parameters calculation Graphic User Interface (GUI) was created for calculatingthe parameters conveniently and quickly, on the other hand this GUI has laid a goodfoundation for calculating paper topography parameters.