Electrostatic-latent-image-developing toner, electrostatic latent image developer, process for producing electrostatic-latent-image-developing toner, image-forming method, and image-forming apparatus

1. An electrostatic-image-developing toner comprising:

toner particles containing a binder resin, a colorant, and a release agent,

wherein

the toner contains colorless binder resin particles and, of the colorless binder resin particles, particles having a volume-average particle size diameter 1.5 times as large as, or larger than that of, D50 of the toner particles are in a proportion of about 30 particles or less particles per 5,000 toner particles, with D50 being a volume-average particle size diameter of the toner particles.

2. The electrostatic-image-developing toner according to claim 1 , wherein the colorless binder resin particles have a shape factor SF 1 of about 120 or less.

3. An electrostatic image developer comprising the toner according to claim 1 and a carrier.

4. An image-forming apparatus comprising:

a latent image-forming unit that forms a latent image on a latent image carrier,

a developing unit that develops the latent image by using an electrostatic-image-developing toner,

a transfer unit that transfers the developed toner image onto a transfer-receiving material, and

a fixing unit that fixes the toner on the transfer-receiving material,

wherein the electrostatic-image-developing toner is the electrostatic-image-developing toner according to claim 3 .

5. The electrostatic-image-developing toner according to claim 1 , wherein the toner is produced according to a process comprising:

emulsifying an oil phase containing a polymerizable monomer for preparing the binder resin in an aqueous phase under stirring to thereby prepare an emulsion containing the polymerizable monomer;

polymerizing the polymerizable monomer by stirring at high speed upon adding a polymerization initiator to the aqueous phase to which the emulsion containing the polymerizable monomer has been added to thereby prepare binder resin particles;

mixing a dispersion of binder resin particles wherein the thus-obtained binder resin particles of about 1 μm or less in particle size are dispersed, a colorant dispersion wherein the colorant is dispersed, and a release agent dispersion wherein the release agent is dispersed, to aggregate into particles of a toner particle size containing the binder resin and the colorant; and

fusing by heating the thus-obtained aggregated particles to a temperature equal to or higher than the glass transition temperature of the binder resin particles to thereby form toner particles.

6. An image-forming method comprising:

charging a photoreceptor;

exposing the charged photoreceptor to form a latent image on the photoreceptor;

developing the latent image to form a developed image;

transferring the developed image onto a transfer-receiving material; and

heat-fixing the toner on a fixing substrate;

wherein the toner is the electrostatic-image-developing toner according to claim 1 .