El papel térmico, también conocido como "papel químico" o "rollo térmico" es un tipo especial de papel reactivo al calor, y que se imprime mediante el método de "impresión térmica directa". Esto significa que se imprime gracias al calor, sin tinta. Un papel térmico tiene dos lados o caras, anverso y reverso. La cara anversa está recubierta por un revestimiento ligeramente brillante, mientras que el reverso es opaco. Cuando se aplica una fuente de calor por la parte inferior (la opaca), el anverso se oscurece justo donde hemos aplicado calor, de la misma formaque si se quemara.

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Thermal paper is a special fine paper that is coated with a chemical (containing BPA) that changes color when exposed to heat. It is used in thermal printers and particularly in inexpensive or lightweight devices such as adding machines, cash registers, and credit card terminals. The surface of the paper is coated with a solid-state mixture of a dye and a suitable matrix; a combination of a fluoran leuco dye as an example. When the matrix is heated above its melting point, the dye reacts with the acid, shifts to its colored form, and the changed form is then conserved in a metastable state when the matrix solidifies back quickly enough. The reactant acid in thermal paper is often bisphenol A (BPA). Usually, the coating will turn black when heated, but coatings that turn blue or red are sometimes used. While an open heat source, such as a flame, can discolor the paper, a fingernail swiped quickly across the paper will also generate enough heat from friction to produce a mark. Multicolor thermal paper first became available in the early 1990s with the introduction of the Fuji Thermo-Autochrome (TA) system. This was followed in the early 2000s by the development of the Polaroid Zink ("zero-ink") system. Both of these methods rely on multi-layer coatings with three separate colorizing layers, but different methods are used for independent activation of each layer.

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