Patent ID: 6670089
Filing Date: 2003-12-30
Classification: G03G

Abstract:
An electrophotographic image forming method, comprising cyclic steps including:a charging step of charging a rotating image-bearing member to charge a surface thereof; a latent image forming steps of forming an electrostatic latent image on the charged surface of the image-bearing member; a developing step of developing the electrostatic latent image with a negatively chargeable magnetic toner to form a toner image thereon; and a transfer step of transferring the toner image onto a recording material, wherein the image-bearing member comprises an electroconductive support, and a photoconductor layer and a surface layer formed on the support, said photoconductor layer comprising a silicon-based non-single crystal material containing at least one of hydrogen and halogen, said surface layer comprising a carbon-based non-single crystal material containing at least one of hydrogen and halogen and also containing silicon in a proportion of 0.2 to 20 atm. % as calculated by Si/(Si+C), said magnetic toner comprises toner particles comprising at least a binder resin and a magnetic material, and inorganic fine powder, has an average circularity of at least 0.950 and has a saturation magnetization of 10 to 50 Am2/kg as measured at 79.6 kA/m, in the charging step, the image-bearing member is charged to a negative polarity by a contact charging means including charging particles comprising principally electroconductive particles having particle sizes of 0.1-10 &mgr;m, and a charging particle carrying member having an electroconductive and elastic surface and carrying the charging particles on the surface so as to contact the image-bearing member via the charging particles, in the latent image forming step, an image forming part of the surface of the image-bearing member is exposed to light to provide an attenuated potential thereat, thereby forming the electrostatic latent image, and no cleaning step is included between the transfer step and the charging step.