E-PAPER Technology

INTRODUCTION

Today’s electronic displays have ever more evolved to be more lightweight, efficient and clear. Yet the importances of the paper have not diminished. We still prefer it to others for a variety of reasons including its readability, high contrast, convenient handling, minimum power requirement cost and strainless reading it offers. At the same time, electronic displays offer us a paperless environment and gadgets like PDAs, cell phones relieves us from carrying loads of paper for referring to information when required.

Electronic ink is a pioneering invention that combiners all the desired features of a modern electronic display and the sheer convenience and physical versatility of sheet of paper. E-paper or electronic paper is sometimes called radio paper or smart paper. It is many applications includes making of the next generation paper. Paper would be perfect except for one obvious thing: printed words can’t change. The effort is to create a dynamic high-resolution electronic display that’s thin and flexible enough to become the next generation of paper.

The technology has been identified and developed is well under way. Within five years, it is envisioned electronic books that can display volumes of information as easily as flipping a page and permanent newspapers that update themselves daily via wireless broadcast just as today’s books give people easy access to everyday information, tomorrow’s books will provide the same easy access to the dynamic data of the information age.

Electronic paper next generation displays are like technology breakthrough that design is of electronic devices have been waiting for. These ultra thin, flexible displays mark the beginning of a new era for battery powered information appliances such as PDAs, cell phones, pagers and hand-held computers. They deliver the readability of paper under virtually any condition, without backlighting. And electronic ink displays are persistent without paper, drawing current only when they change, which means batteries can be smaller and last longer.

Two companies are carrying our pioneering works in the field of development of electronic ink and both have developed ingenious methods to produce electronic ink. One is E-ink, a company based at Cambridge, Massachusetts in U.S. A. The other is Xerox doing research work at the Xerox’s palo Atto Research Center. Both are being funded by big companies like Philips, Penguin books, Motorola, The Hearst Corporation, and Attas Venture. These are the companies who believe that electronic paper does have a future.

E-PAPER TECHNOLOGY

E-paper is also called radio paper. It is a portable, reusable storage and display medium that looks like paper but can be repeatedly written on electronic means –thousands or millions of time

Xerox in partnership with 3M, has created as E paper called Gyricon. E paper consisted of two transparent layers containing oil with suspended beads. The beads have different coloured hemispheres; charged positively and negatively. When a charge is applied to the sandwich, the beads rotate of a full rotation displays as black or white and a partial rotation displays in gray shades. The image stays until a new charge in applied.

ABOUT LUCENT TECHNOLOGY

The company E-ink has developed electronic ink and e-ink displays with the collaboration of Lucent Technologies.

Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronic to create this new material. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged particles of white titanium dioxide and negatively charged black or blue liquid dye particle suspended in a clear solution that change colour when exposed to an electric charge. That is the charged dye particles move either up or down within the capsules. When a negative charge is applied, the white particles move to the tope of the capsule where they become visible to the user.

This makes the surface appear white at the sport. At the same time an opposite electric charge pulls the black or blue dye particles to the bottom. But reversing the process, black/blue dye particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface dark at that sport.

Once the image is formed no power is required to keep the particle in position. To form an E-ink electronic display, the ink is printed on to a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. The display is made up of several layers and is approximately 1mm in thickness.

These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid “carrier medium” allowing them to be printed using existing screen-printing processes ink virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper. Ultimately electronic ink will permit most any surface to become a display, bringing information out of the confines of traditional devices and into the world around us.