Image forming apparatus having a diamond-like structure surface protection layer on a photoconductive layer

An image forming apparatus comprising:

• a photoconductive element comprising a conductive support rotatably supported and a charge injection layer and a surface protection layer sequentially laminated on said conductive support;
• charging means for injecting, when a preselected voltage is applied to a conductive body thereof, a charge in said charge injection layer with said conductive body contacting said surface protection layer;
• writing means for exposing a charged surface of said photoconductive element imagewise to thereby locally vary a potential deposited on said photoconductive element and electrostatically form a latent image;
• and
• developing means for developing the latent image to thereby produce a corresponding toner image, said toner image being transferred from said photoconductive element to a recording medium;
• wherein assuming that said charge injection layer has a thickness of D micrometers, and that the potential deposited on the surface of said photoconductive element by said conductive member is V volts in absolute value, then a ratio V/D is confined in a preselected range that does not contaminate a background of said photoconductive element.

An image forming apparatus comprising:

• an image carrier comprising a conductive support, at last a photoconductive layer formed on said conductive support, and a surface protection layer formed on said photoconductive layer and including a charge injection layer;
• and
• a charging member for charging said image carrier in contact with said surface protection layer when applied with a voltage;
• wherein said surface protection layer has a diamond-like structure or an amorphous structure containing hydrogen, and wherein said charging member comprises magnetic particles for charging having a mean particle size ranging from 20 μm to 150 μm.

An image forming apparatus comprising:

• an image carrier comprising a conductive support, at last a photoconductive layer formed on said conductive support, and a surface protection layer formed on said photoconductive layer and including a charge injection layer;
• a charging member for charging said image carrier in contact with said surface protection layer when applied with a voltage;
• and
• a developing unit for developing a latent image formed on said image carrier with toner to thereby produce a corresponding toner image;
• wherein said surface protection layer has a diamond-like carbon structure or an amorphous structure containing hydrogen, wherein said developing unit develops the latent image with a magnet brush formed by magnetic particles for development, and wherein said charging member comprises magnetic particles for charging having a mean particle size smaller than a mean particle size of said magnetic particles for development.