Cleanerless image forming apparatus with toner containing 1.8% by mass or less an external additive having a diameter of 5-50 nanometers

An image forming apparatus, comprising:

• an image bearer;
• a charger disposed in contact with the image bearer to charge the image bearer;
• a developing device configured to supply toner to the image bearer to form a toner image on the image bearer;
• and
• a transferor configured to transfer the toner image on the image bearer to a recording medium or an intermediate transferor,
• the developing device configured to collect transfer residual toner remaining on the image bearer after transfer of the toner image,
• the toner containing base particles and an external additive,
• the external additive having a volume average particle diameter of 5 nm or more and 50 nm or less,
• a content of the external additive being 1.8% by mass or less in the toner,
• the external additive containing fine inorganic particles,
• the fine inorganic particles having a plurality of peaks in a particle size range of 5 nm or more and 50 nm or less in a particle size distribution of primary particles, and
• when among the plurality of peaks, a highest peak is denoted by n1, a second highest peak is denoted by n2, a particle size in unit of nm of a vertex of the peak n1 is denoted by n1d, a particle size in unit of nm of a vertex of the peak n2 is represented by n2d, a height of the vertex of the peak n1 is represented by n1h, and a height of the vertex of the peak n2 is represented by n2h, all of the following formulas (1) to (3) being satisfied:
• n1d>n2d (1);
• 10<(n1d+n2d) (2);
• and
• 30≤{(n2h/n1h)×100}<100 (3).