Image forming apparatus controlling polarity of residual toner and process cartridge for use in the same

摘要

An image forming apparatus includes an image carrier, a charging device configured to uniformly charge a surface of the image carrier with a charging member applied with a bias of a first polarity (e.g. a negative polarity) for charging. A latent image forming device forms a latent image on the surface of the image carrier uniformly charged. A developing device develops a latent image by depositing toner grains of the first polarity on the latent image to thereby form a corresponding toner image. A transferring device forms an electric field between the image carrier and a moving member that serves as a movable contact with the image carrier to thereby transfer the toner image from the surface of the image carrier to the moving member or to a recording member nipped between the image carrier and the moving member. A polarity controlling device sets residual toner to a second polarity (e.g. a positive polarity) opposite to the first polarity, before the residual toner left on the image carrier by the transferring device is conveyed to a corresponding position to the charging member.