Appeal No. 1998-0150
Application No. 08/435,224
The claimed subject matter is directed to a heat mode
recording element comprising, in order: a support, a layer
containing a roughening agent, a metal recording layer and a
protective element. According to pages 5 and 6 of the
specification, the claimed layer containing a roughening agent
is defined as follows:
The roughening agent incorporated in layer (b)
- for many actual substances this term will be
equivalent to the more familiar terms “matting agent”
or “spacing agent”, but the term is chosen for its
functional aspect - must fulfil several requirements
for the successful practice of the present invention.
Chemical nature, concentration and particle distribution
of the roughening agent must be chosen in such a way
that a certain degree of unevenness can be introduced
in the metal recording layer. It is shown that this
unevenness can reduce the occurrence of interference
patterns because the reflectance gets more diffuse.
It will be clear that the roughening agent must be
closely packed in the layer. It will also be easily
understood that the thickness of layer (b), the average
particle size and the coverage of the roughening
agent must be tuned to each other in such a way
that a sufficient number of the roughening particles
must protrude above the interface layer (b) / metal layer
in order to induce local deformation spots into this
metal layer. When the average particle size is too
low the roughening agent will not be able to introduce
unevenness in the metal layer. When the average
particle size is too great too high a coverage will
be required which would make layer (b) too thick.
So it is clear that an optimal particle size should
be chosen for the roughening agent and that this
optimum will depend on the mechanical strength of
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007