Patent ID: 7386256

Claim:
An image forming apparatus, comprising: a latent electrostatic image carrier; a forming unit configured to form a latent electrostatic image on the latent electrostatic image carrier (1, 24, 101, 15); a developing unit configured to develop, with a toner, the latent electrostatic image, to thereby form a visible image; a transferring unit configured to transfer the visible image to a recording medium; and a fixing unit configured to fix the image transferred to the recording medium, wherein the latent electrostatic image carrier comprises: a support, a photoconductive layer on the support, and a surface protective layer on the support, wherein the surface protective layer comprises a mesh structured resin made by cross-linking the following: an electric charge transporting material which comprises a reactive functional group, a cross-linking resin, and a fluorine surfactant, and wherein the toner comprises an inorganic fine particle which defines an effective inorganic fine particle amount in a range of 0.8% by mass to 3.0% by mass calculated from the following equation (1): Effective ⁢ ⁢ inorganic particle ⁢ ⁢ amount ⁢ ⁢ ( % ) = Inorganic ⁢ ⁢ particle amount ⁢ ⁢ ( % ) SF - 2 / 100 Equation ⁢ ⁢ ( 1 ) wherein SF-2 denotes a shape factor of the toner.