The formation of reliefs on the surface of glazed ceramic tiles makes it possible to obtain attractive designs. However, obtaining them by direct application of ink is very limited by the maximum amount of ink that can be applied by the heads, by its spreading before drying and by its melting during firing.
 
In recent years, water-repellent inks have been developed, which repel the glaze applied on them and produce more pronounced reliefs than additive techniques. The repellent capacity of these inks and their industrial robustness is limited, which leads to a loss of quality in the tiles obtained. As a consequence, the main objective of this work has been to increase the repellent capacity of the ink and its industrial robustness, i.e. the time in which this behaviour remains. To this purpose, the mechanism of hydrophobicity has been studied, a laboratory method has been developed for ceramic materials and the viability of different formulation techniques has been studied in order to achieve the proposed objectives.
 
The experimental procedure developed in this work enabled the identification of the materials with the greatest repellent capacity, as well as the duration of the effect. The three hydrophobing techniques used were: the reduction of the surface energy of the vehicle, the mixing of solid materials with very low surface energy and, finally, the surface modification of existing solids. For each mechanism, different materials have been tested. The results obtained show the viability of the three techniques to achieve the objectives, so the advantages and disadvantages of each of them have been analysed