Preparation of Ultrafine Spherical Pr-ZrSiO4 Pigment by Sol-Gel-Microemulsion Method

To obtain the ultrafine pigment for ink-jet printing, ultrafine spherical Pr-ZrSiO4 pigment was prepared by sol-gel-microemulsion method (S-G-M). In the emulsion, ZrO2 and SiO2 sols are used as water phase, cyclohexane serves as oil phase, Triton X-100 and 1-hexanol are chosen as surfactant and co-surfactant, respectively. The results show that without the introduction of demulsifier, the sol/oil microemulsion system is demulsified automatically due to the transformation of liquid/liquid to solid/liquid interface following the transformation from sol to gel. The obtained Pr-ZrSiO4 pigment owns uniform spherical particles with the average particle size of about 0.785 μm, which is suitable for the ink-jet printing. The CIE coordination of the pigment is L* = 87.63, a* = −3.82, b* = 65.68, which shows bright lemon yellow. Hence, the ultrafine pigment in this work has the good application prospects.