A thermal printing ribbon that has reduced or no wrinkling during printing includes inorganic particles in a polymeric host material in at least one layer of the ribbon. The ribbon has improved mechanical and thermal properties as compared to ribbons not incorporating the inorganic particles. The ribbon can be used to form images on a dye-receiver element wherein the images have few or no artifacts caused by wrinkling of the thermal printing ribbon. The ribbon can be used in high speed printing.