Patent ID: 7738829

Claim:
A process cartridge, comprising: a photoconductor having a surface comprising polycarbonate, on which a latent image is to be formed; a protective agent comprising paraffin as a main component pre-applied to the surface of the photoconductor in a particular coating condition prior to first operation of said process cartridge; a charging unit configured to uniformly charge the photoconductor; a development unit configured to develop the latent image formed on the surface of photoconductor as a toner image using a developing agent including toner particles; a cleaning unit configured to remove toner particles remaining on the surface of the photoconductor after the toner image is transferred to a transfer member; and an application unit configured to apply additional protective agent to the surface of photoconductor during operation thereof, wherein said particular coating condition is determined by analyzing a C1s spectrum of the photoconductor, which is detected by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) before and after applying the protective agent to the photoconductor, the C1s spectrum including a plurality of peaks, corresponding to different carbon binding energy, one of the plurality of peaks in a binding energy range of 290.3 eV to 294 eV used as a target peak to determine the coating condition of the photoconductor coated by the protective agent, a peak area of the target peak with respect to a total area of the C1s spectrum of the photoconductor detected before and after applying the protective agent as a first peak area ratio A 0 (%) and a second peak area ratio A(%) to determine the coating condition of the photoconductor, the first peak area ratio A 0 (%) detected as a value before applying the protective agent, the photoconductor having the first peak area ratio A 0 (%) of 3% or more employed, the second peak area ratio A(%) detected as a value after applying the protective agent, the photoconductor is pre-applied with the protective agent having a coating ratio of 60% or more, computed by (A 0 −A)/A 0 ×100(%).