Thermal autochrome printing

The Thermoautochrome process is a printing process developed by Fujifilm that uses a special paper. It is most comparable to Polaroid's Zero Ink(ZINK).

As with Zero Ink, the Thermoautochrome paper has several layers of color: cyan, magenta and yellow( CMY). The color pigments are activated by heat, with yellow responding to the lowest temperatures, magenta to medium temperatures and cyan to high temperatures. As with the dye-sublimation printer, heat is generated in a heating element that consists of many controllable semiconductor elements. The heat of each heating element is controllable, and the compactness of the juxtaposed heating elements allows for 300 dpiresolution.

When printing with the Thermoautochrome printer, one color pigment layer of the special paper is activated at a time. Thus, for CMY, the special paper passes the print head three times. After each print run, the respective color layer is fixed with UV light.