An electrophotographic blade to be brought into contact with a contact member, comprises a plate spring, and a resin layer that covers at least a part of a surface of the plate spring to form a contact region that comes into contact with a contact member. In the state where one of ends of the plate spring is fixed, a length (L) from the fixed end to the another end is 5 mm to 20 mm, and a force needed to displace the another end by 1 mm is 5 N/m to 100 N/m. The resin layer satisfies the requirements: (1) the thickness of the resin layer is 0.05 mm to 2.00 mm, (2) the tan δ value of the resin layer in the range of 5° C. to 40° C. is 0.05 to 0.70, and (3) the elastic modulus of the resin layer is 1.0 to 60.0 MPa.

An image forming apparatus includes: a photoconductor; a charging roller; an exposure device; a developing device that is provided on the downstream side of the charging roller in the rotation direction of the photoconductor, and forms a toner image by supplying toner to the latent image; a cleaning blade that is provided between a transfer part of the surface of the photoconductor located on a downstream side of the developing device in the rotation direction of the photoconductor and the charging roller, and removes the residual toner adhering to a part of the surface of the photoconductor on a downstream side of the transfer part; a lubricant supplier that supplies a lubricant to the surface of the photoconductor; and a voltage controller that controls a charging voltage to be applied to the charging roller.

Provided is an electrophotographic member in which the increase in tackiness is small even in an environment of high temperature and high humidity. The electrophotographic member includes an electroconductive substrate and a surface layer, the surface layer contains resin including at least one of a urethane bond and an amide bond, the resin includes a cationic structure and an anionic structure in a molecule, and also includes a particular main-chain structure with hydrophobicity.

A cleaning solution is used to at least substantially remove colorant from the photoconductive drum as the photoconductive drum rotates. A wiper wipes the cleaning solution from the photoconductive drum while purposefully maintaining a layer of the cleaning solution on the drum. The wiper has an edge that is purposefully rounded.

Provided is a cleaning member including a urethane rubber, wherein the urethane rubber has a cyclic structure portion in which a fluorine atom is directly bonded to the cyclic structure portion.

An electrophotographic photoreceptor includes a conductive substrate and a photosensitive layer on the conductive substrate. The electrophotographic photoreceptor has an outermost surface layer that contains fluorine-containing resin particles and an antioxidant. The fluorine-containing resin particles contain 0 or more and 30 or less carboxy groups per 10.sup.6 carbon atoms. A decrease in weight of the antioxidant when heated at 150° C. for 10 minutes in an air atmosphere is 40 mass % or less.

An electrophotographic photoreceptor includes a conductive substrate and a photosensitive layer on the conductive substrate. The electrophotographic photoreceptor has an outermost surface layer that contains fluorine-containing resin particles and a fluorine-containing graft polymer. The fluorine-containing resin particles contain 0 or more and 30 or less carboxy groups per 10.sup.6 carbon atoms. The outermost surface layer has a dielectric constant of 3.75 or more and 3.90 or less. The contact angle of pure water on the outermost surface layer is 90° or more.

Toner contains toner base particles and an organosilicon polymer on the surface of the toner base particles, and silica particles are added to the toner as an external additive. The surface roughness Rz of an intermediate transfer belt, against which a blade abuts, in the width direction of the intermediate transfer belt perpendicular to the belt conveying direction is larger than the average particle diameter Ry of the organosilicon polymer and is smaller than the average particle diameter Rk of the silica particles.

A cleaning blade includes an elastic member to contact a surface of a cleaning target member. The elastic member includes a base material and a surface layer on at least a part of a lower surface of the base material including a contact part. Martens hardness of the surface layer has a gradient of decrease from a surface of the surface layer toward the lower surface of the base material in a film thickness direction. The Martens hardness is 2.5 to 32.5 N/mm.sup.2 in a range from a vicinity of the surface (with a load of 1 μN) to a deepest part in the film thickness direction (with a load of 1000 μN). An average film thickness of the surface layer is 10 μm or more to 500 μm or less. A content of a siloxane-based compound in the surface layer is 4 to 15% by mass.

A cleaning device includes a thin plate-shaped first blade that cleans a surface of a toner carrying body by making a tip portion come in contact with the toner carrying body to carry toner. The first blade includes a substrate and a coat layer covering a surface of the substrate. In the first blade, a cross-sectional shape, in a thickness direction, of the tip portion is a convex shape, or a protruding shape in which a center side protrudes more than an end portion of a contact side.