Thermally developed photographic materials based on silver organic salts

Analysis of patents, publications and our own experimental data concerning thermally developed photographic materials based on silver organic salts (A gO2CxH2x-1, x = 10-22) makes it possible to outline the prospects of their future development as well as the trends in the scientific activity devoted to optimizing these materials. The study of the competing processes of the catalytic thermal development of silver carboxylates, in conjunction with the developing agents, and catalytic thermal degradation elf silver carboxy lates in the absence of developers, has revealed that radical reactions pla y a significant role in these processes. Because the formation of radicals adversely affect the stability of thermally developed materials we have fou nd that it is very important to use developing agents that are inhibitors o f radical processes. We have studied the effect of the composition and ingr edient ratios in the photosensitive films on the sensitivity of thermally d eveloped photographic papers (TDPP), both spectrally and chemically sensiti zed. The correlation between structure and the developing ability of reduci ng agents used in TDPP is established. The sensitivity of TDPP can be incre ased both through the modification of the light-sensitive composition with benzotriazolidophosphate and through increasing the efficiency of sulfur se nsitization with amines. Also, boric acid is found to be an efficient cross linking agent for the polymer binder in TDPP, polyvinylbutyral. In addition , high stability of TDPP can be achieved by using a reducing agent encapsul ated within a polyvinylacetade caplet.