ELECTROPHOTOGRAPHIC TONER, DEVELOPER CONTAINING THE TONER, AND IMAGE FORMING APPARATUS

An electrophotographic toner including: a binder resin, wherein the binder resin has one glass transition temperature Tg and the glass transition temperature Tg of the binder resin is within 25° C. to 65° C. as measured in second heating with a differential scanning calorimeter at a heating rate of 5° C./min, and wherein a phase image of the binder resin obtained with an atomic force microscope (AFM) of tapping mode contains first phase difference regions and a second phase difference region such that the first phase difference regions are dispersed in the second phase difference region, where the first phase difference regions correspond to greater phase difference regions and the second phase difference region corresponds to a smaller phase difference region when an intermediate value between a maximum value and a minimum value of the phase differences is used as a threshold.