Photothermographic dry imaging material easy to separate emulsion layer from support and method for separation

#The present invention relates to a photothermographic dry imaging material which exhibits high image quality as well as excellent storage stability, and excellent re-usability of resources, and specifically to a silver salt black-and-white photothermographic dry imaging material which exhibits excellent layer adhesion as well as excellent adhesive properties of its photosensitive layer and its backing layer after heat development, excellent silver image storage stability, and easy separation of an emulsion layer from a support.

#Heretofore, in the medical and printing plate making fields, effluent resulting from wet type processing for image forming materials became problematic in terms of workability, and in recent years, from the viewpoint of environmental protection as well as space saving, a decrease in processing effluent has been highly demanded.

#Accordingly, demanded have been techniques, regarding photothermographic materials, for use in photographic techniques in which efficient exposure can be performed utilizing laser imagers and image setters, and can form clear black-and-white images at high resolution.

#The present invention will now be detailed with reference to examples.

#<Preparation of a Photographic Subbed Support>

#A 175 μm thick biaxially stretched and thermally fixed PET film tinted with blue at an optical density of 0.170 (measured by a densitometer PDA-65, produced by Konica Corp.) was subjected to corona discharge treatment of 8 W/m2-minute on both surfaces. Subsequently, the subbing coating composition “a-1”, described below, was applied onto one surface so as to form a dried layer thickness of 0.8 μm and then dried at 140° C. The resulting layer was designated as Sublayer A-1. Further, the subbing coating composition “b-1”, described below, was applied onto the other surface so as to form a dried layer thickness of 0.8 μm, and subsequently dried at 140° C. The resulting coating, which exhibited antistatic function, was designated as Sublayer B-1.