Patent ID: 7947339

Claim:
A process for producing an electrophotographic roller member comprising a roller base member having a conductive mandrel and an elastic layer formed on the peripheral surface of the conductive mandrel, the elastic layer having a thickness of from 0.5 to 5.0 mm and a modulus in tension of from 1 to 100 MPa , and a film formed by plasma CVD on the peripheral surface of the elastic layer, the process comprising the steps of: placing the roller base member in a chamber between first and second flat-plate electrodes which are disposed parallel to each other, with a distance between the surface of the elastic layer and each of the flat-plate electrodes being from 20 to 100 mm; feeding a source gas into the chamber so as to have a pressure within the chamber of from 13.3 to 666.6 Pa; and applying to the first flat-plate electrode an electric power with an output of from 0.3 to 2.0 W/cm2 while the roller base member is rotated so that the peripheral speed of the surface to be processed is from 6 to 170 mm/s in the chamber into which the source gas has been fed, thereby generating plasma inside the chamber, to form said film on the surface of the elastic layer, wherein the film mainly comprises SiOx, where X is 1 or 2, and has O-Si-O as a main skeleton, and Si and O in the film is at least 60% of all elements as measured by surface analysis of the film, and the film has chemical bonds of Si-O and Si-C, where the abundance ratio O/Si of the Si and O is from 1.00 to 1.95, and the abundance ratio C/Si of the Si and C is from 0.05 to 1.00.