e-paper

Princeton University and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories researchers have constructed a very low cost data storage device from plastic and silicon that can potentially store one hundred megabits of information per square centimeter.

The device is made from thin-film silicon electronics covered with a conductive polymer coating. The coating, dubbed Pedot, was first used as an antistatic coating for photographic film and is also used as a transparent electric contact for some types of video displays.

The researchers discovered that the material is conductive only at low voltages, and permanently loses its conductivity -- like a blown fuse -- when exposed to higher voltages. Tiny squares of conducting and non-conducting Pedot can represent the ones and zeros of computer information, and millions can be wired into a layered grid of circuits. Such memory can be read by sending a low voltage through all the squares and noting those that conduct and those that do not.

The researchers' device combines attributes of solid-state silicon memory devices and plastic storage devices like CDs. The method to be used to make a memory card that has no moving parts and can be written to once, but accessed many times.

The device could probably be made cheaply enough for one-time-use applications, according to the researchers.

The memory devices could be commercially viable in five years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the October 12, 2003 issue of Nature.

"Displays and monitors as thin as paper that carry text, images and even video move into the light as researchers unveil the candidates…e ink, smart paper, magink and now electronic paper.

"All of these new technologies use ambient light rather than lug lights or light producing equipment with them. All of the candidates strive for high reflectivity, brilliant color and video speed. All of the candidates scrabble for the lead in this multi-billion-dollar display industry market.

"E-ink sports small particles that migrate within a monolayer of bubbles to change its reflective surface.

"Smart paper twirls two-toned spheres to alter its reflected image.

"Magink tilts helical molecules to bounce the colorful image across its surface and now electronic paper dazzles its reflection through oil...".

Robert A. Hayes, B. Johan Feenstra, 'Video-speed electronic paper based on electrowetting', Nature Vol. 425, pp. 383-385, 25 September 2003.
Philips Research on Electrowetting displays -- Powerpoint with links to video clips

Reprint of Nature article on electrowetting (PDF; 485 KB)

By Mike Magee: Friday 13 December 2002, 12:17
ISUPPLI HELD A big Flat Displays Conference earlier this month and one of the presentations we've just received caught our eye.

The presentation, by Darren Bischoff, product marketing manager at the E Ink Corporation, points out the big obstacle to reading e-books and e-magazines like ours on handhelds and notebooks.

Using the current LCD technology, if you increase the screen size a device uses more power, weighs more, and is therefore far more fragile. There's subsequently a trade off between display size, performance and portability, and that's a problem E Ink wants to address.

...the first displays using this technology are likely to be hybrid....

...The firm eventually wants to produce RadioPaper – a device that has flexible pages, the size of a tabloid, laid out like a newspaper and which connects via wireless to the news source.

...While E Ink supplies the electronic ink, Toppan might produce the Frontplane Laminate, Philips the active matrix display module, and then others would OEM the sets."

TOKYO — Sony Corp. and 14 major publishing, printing and newspaper companies are planning a new eBook business that will focus on rental service based on OpenMG, Sony's digital rights management technology.

The partners established an eBook distribution company for Japan called Publishing link, Ltd. here on Nov. 4 to begin an eBook rental business next spring. Initially, Sony will own a 41-percent stake in the company, while Kodansha and Shinchosha, both major publishers in Japan, each hold 15.38 percent. Dai Nippon Printing and Toppan Printing are the third largest shareholders, owning 10.25 percent each. The remaining nine founders share the rest...".

Companies, people, technologies mentioned:

...Toppan Printing
...BBeB format
...Electronic Book Business Consortium
...Matsushita Electric Industries
...Toshiba Corp
...Dai Nippon
...Noriyuki Manabe, vice president and chief operating officer of Publishing link

Technology Research News  November 5, 2003

Although flat-panel displays are less expensive than they were a few years ago, they are still relatively expensive as electrical appliances go. One of the main costs of manufacturing active-matrix liquid crystal displays is making the screen's backplane, which contains as many transistors as the screen has pixels.

Researchers from Princeton University have demonstrated a way to use a flexible stamp to print these thin-film transistors. The usual photolithography process etches layers of methyl, semiconductor and insulator using chemicals and light....

...The printing process is also poised to enable new types of large-area electronics such as screens that encompass walls or floors, according to the researchers.

The printing process could also be used with organic, or plastic, transistors, which are comparable in performance to and potentially cheaper than the amorphous silicon transistors used today.

The researchers' eventual goal is to directly print electronics on flexible surfaces.

Printing thin film transistors could be introduced into manufacturing processes within five years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the October 13, 2003 issue of Applied Physics Letters.

By LIDIA WASOWICZ
United Press International
 
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 11, 2003 -- Thirty years in the making, and about to break through commercially into the retail sign market with a display technology offering by Gyricon LLC of Ann Arbor, Mich., electronic paper stands to revolutionize the way written communication is transmitted, displayed, updated and retained.

United Press International talked to e-paper expert Yu Chen about advances in the field and their future implications. Chen, principal engineer at Kovio Inc., a nanotechnology company in Sunnyvale, Calif., captured widespread attention last May when he reported in the British journal Nature the development of an electronic-ink display screen just three times the width of a human hair, flexible enough to be rolled into a tube just 4 millimeters across and viewable from almost any angle...".

"...There are also other companies trying to develop e-paper using various technologies, such as EDD, Cholesteric LCD, electrochromic, MEMS, etc...

"...I expect that e-paper will be in our daily lives in 10 years...

"...Electronic newspapers, books, smart ID cards, wearable computer screens and TVs.

"There are two major challenges for realizing paper-like displays. The first is to develop an electronically controllable display medium, which has the optical qualities of regular ink on paper. Various technologies have been developed, such as E Ink, Gyricon, EDD, Cholesteric LCD, electrochromic, MEMS and electrowetting.

The second challenge is to develop flexible circuits on very thin substrates to control each individual display pixel (We call it "to address a pixel" in display jargon). To control high-resolution displays, one must use "active-matrix addressing" circuits, which are built using transistors made from thin films. My Nature article (Vol. 423, page 136) has overcome the second challenge...".