Hyperbranched polyglycerol as an additive for water-based printing ink

In this work, the application of hyperbranched polyglycerol as a performance additive for water-based printing inks is demonstrated. The hyperbranched polyglycerol, (BPG), was synthesized through anionic ring-opening polymerization from glycidol using 1-butanol as the starting material. The branched structure of BPG is presented and described. The presence of linear, dendritic and terminal units was confirmed by Moore et al. (Prog Surf Sci 88(3):213–236, 2013) 13C NMR spectroscopy. BPG was then used as a performance additive in a water-based flexographic printing ink. The impact of a small amount of hyperbranched BPG on the printing ink color was examined by studying the optical density of a full-tone area, the total color difference, ΔE ab *, and the gloss of the dried ink film. The colorfastness to dry and wet rubbing of overprinted samples was studied. The investigated BPG is shown to be able to improve colorfastness to dry and wet rubbing of prints.