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Engineers at the University of Cincinnati have shown that under the right conditions, ordinary paper can be as dynamic as any screen.

Nothing looks better than paper for reading, says research leader Andrew Steckl. We hope to have something that would actually look like paper but behave like a computer monitor in terms of its ability to store information. We would have something that is very cheap, very fast, full-color and at the end of the day or the end of the week, you could pitch it into the trash.

Steckl’s e-paper uses electrowetting, moving colored pigments from pixel to pixel using electronic charges, on a paper substrate. Electrowetting offers color, fast response times and video capability that current E Ink electrophoretic screens can’t match, but with similarly low power consumption.

Companies like Liquavista and Plastic Logic have prototype color e-readers that use this technology, but apply the electrowetting chemicals to a sheet of glass. The Cincinatti team say its electrowetted paper offers the same performance as glass, but with greater flexibility and at a lower cost.

Steckl and grad student Duk Young Kim of U of C’s Nanoelectronics Laboratory presented their findings in the October issue of the American Chemical Society’s ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces journal. It was then reviewed in the November issue of Nature Photonics. The research was part of Kim’s doctoral dissertation.

One of the main goals of e-paper is to replicate the look and feel of actual ink on paper, write Steckl and Kim in the ACS article. We have, therefore, investigated the use of paper as the perfect substrate for EW devices to accomplish e-paper on paper.

In general, this is an elegant method for reducing device complexity and cost, resulting in one-time-use devices that can be totally disposed after use, the researchers note.

Technical details from the ACS paper on electrowetting

It’s still not easy, and industrializing the process will likely take some time. For maximum performance, the process involves a specific grade of paper with a particular surface coating, roughness, thickness and water uptake and a carefully controlled contact angle at which the electrowetted material is applied to the paper support. Electrowetted glass e-readers may appear sometime next year, but you’re unlikely to see disposable paper screens in newspapers or posters for at least three to five years.

Meanwhile, the Nanoelectronics team will continue experimenting with electrowetting on various flexible surfaces, with different fluids and electronic components, trying to maximize performance.

There’s an historical irony here. In the nineteenth century, “wet plate” photography involved applying a silver nitrate collodion solution to a glass plate. Eventually, George Eastman was able to take a dry collodion emulsion and apply it to ordinary paper, creating the first camera that ordinary people could use. After Eastman substituted celluloid film, which was stronger but just as flexible as paper, the rest was history.

UC Breakthrough May Lead to Disposable E-Readers [University of Cincinatti Press Release]

Image (top): Electrowetted E-Paper Display Mockup from Liquavista.

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E Ink’s new Triton line give the company’s displays a long-desired new feature: color. Most of the E Ink team is in Japan this week, demonstrating their new screens in Hanvon’s new e-reader. I spoke by phone with E Ink’s Lawrence Schwartz, who broke down the technology behind the new screens, Triton’s importance for his company, and where their displays fit into the broader ecosystem of readable screens.

“All of our screens have been building towards this,” Schwartz said. “The contrast and brightness we were able to add to the Pearl’s black-and-white screens, paired with a color filter — that’s what lets us bring color to the display.”

Schwartz emphasized that the company’s primary focus is still developing low-power, high-contrast surfaces for reading. “What’s unique about color in reading,” he added, “is that while most textual content is still in monochrome, we can introduce color into cover art, children’s books, newspapers, and textbooks — places still in the reading field where color is at a premium.”

E Ink developed the Triton screen in conjunction with a group of partners, including Epson, Texas Instruments, Marvell, and the semiconductor companies Maxim and Freescale, all of whom worked on the electronic components of the Pearl screen. In particular, Epson played a key role, providing the color filters’ controller chip.

Underneath, it’s still the same white, black and grayscale electrophoretic pigments; it’s only when filtered through the RGB overlay that the image appears in color. To reach for an historical analogy, it’s not totally dissimilar from film’s Technicolor process, which shot in black-and-white film strips through color filters, then reverse-processed.

Because the underlying technology is identical, Triton’s contrast, energy usage, viewing angle are all essentially the same as the Pearl. The image update or refresh rate for monochrome is the same (240 ms), but color animation can take up to about one full second.

Unlike a LCD display, though, pictures on the Triton don’t need to update the entire screen: a moving figure in the foreground might be refreshed while the background remains identical — just like traditional cel animation.

E-readers are the high-profile example of E Ink in action, but the company’s screens are also used in watches, battery indicators, printers, calculators, signage, end-cap displays in stores and a wide range of industrial displays. All of these displays, Schwartz said, could benefit from the introduction of color. And in the vast majority of these use cases, LCD or other full-video displays simply aren’t feasible, either for reasons of power conservation or the inherently limited nature of what’s being shown.

While Hanvon is the first company bringing the Triton screen to market, Schwartz said E Ink had other customers working with Triton screen technology who haven’t yet made announcements about their forthcoming products. Otherwise, he couldn’t comment on future devices or availability.

The most exciting innovations, Schwartz said, were the experimentations with user interface in conjunction with E Ink screens, whether using multitouch, stylus, or other NUI. E Ink, he said, works to optimize each of its displays for every one of these interfaces, which has required the company to be increasingly flexible in how it thinks about its products.

In the meantime, E Ink’s goal is to continue to improve their existing product line: get higher contrast, brighter colors, faster screen refreshes, and continue to find better ways to optimize their screens for every interface, use case and use environment.

E Ink Triton Imaging Film [E Ink]

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If you are willing to take a screwdriver to your computer, Pixel Qi’s low-power displays that can switch between color LCD and black-and-white screens could be in your netbook.

The 10.1-inch displays available through makershed.com look like standard LCD screens inside the room. But take them outside and they turn into low-power e-paper like display.

Pixel Qi first showed the screens in January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The display called 3Qi operates in three modes: a full-color LCD transmissive mode; a low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a transflective mode that makes the LCD display visible in sunlight.

Pixel Qi has started selling the displays directly to consumers though the company is also working with with PC manufacturers.

For now, Pixel Qi says it can guarantee the compatibility of the displays, which cost $275 each, with only two models of netbooks–the Samsung N130 and Lenovo S10. But the screen works in most other models, says the company.

Swapping out existing netbooks screens for those from Pixel Qi is a simple DIY tweak, says Pixel Qi founder Mary Lou Jepsen.

“Changing the screen of your netbook is easy, the process takes about 5-10 minutes using a small screwdriver. Its simple,” she wrote on her blog.

Users have to remove the front plastic bezel of the existing display in their netbook, unlatch the screen, plug Pixel Qi’s display in its place and snap on the screws.

But if you like to see what the process really is like, check out this video from Make magazine. The 10-minute long video shows how to remove the display off an Acer Aspire One netbook.

Seems like this will be a breeze to do at home and the results should be worth it. Pixel Qi screens consume 80 percent less power in the reflective e-paper-like mode, says Jepsen.

Photo: Pixel Qi screen/Priya Ganapati

[via Ubergizmo via Liliputing]

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