Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range

[wodin]

Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range



They don't say how it works, just that it's got gold and silver in it so it's bound to be expensive.

[chrisridd]

From the article:

The team has tested and built a few pixels [...] what remains now is to build pixels that cover an area as large as a display.

I kind of suspect their next step might be quite hard :-)

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

From the article:



I kind of suspect their next step might be quite hard :-)

If you make a dollar, the next step is simply to make more (999,999 more) to be a millionaire. Same with pixel(s).

[pdurrant]

It's good to see new technology appearing. Whether this can be developed into a technically and economically viable display will only become apparent over the next decade or so.

[DuckieTigger]

Yes, absolutely. What I am missing in the article is the power consumption. I mean, they say uses less energy than a Kindle tablet. They must mean eink Kindle? Because the Fire tablets are nothing special, no more or less energy hungry than any other tablet. But, if they mean eink it still doesn't make sense since it costs NO energy to keep the the display static, but a huge amount of energy to change it. Unless the new display has some sort of solar cell in it, it cannot use less energy than eink on a static page. It is not even clear to me from the article if energy is needed to keep the image from disappearing. Unless a specific usecase is mentioned (which it is not) it makes little sense to compare eink energy consumption to anything else. Eink only uses so little energy when the picture doesn't need to be updated constantly.

[Maoo]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

What I am missing in the article is the power consumption.

As far I understand, this is not an e-ink screen but an active screen. The way it is colouring the pixels is by controlling how the external light is absorbed and reflected.

It all depends on the polymers' ability to control how light is absorbed and reflected. The polymers that cover the whole surface lead the electric signals throughout the full display and create images in high resolution.

Also, it seems to me that if the external light is not neutral, then the image on the screen will change colours. A little like looking to a printed picture under a under alight which spectrum is white or not. Maybe the effect could be also worst... I'm really curious to see it.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It's good to see new technology appearing. Whether this can be developed into a technically and economically viable display will only become apparent over the next decade or so.

Ten years ago tablets were rare and very expensive with very low resolution. The eInk readers made a lot of sense back then, though they were early in their design implementation timeline. Today tablets are relatively inexpensive, way more powerful and versatile than any eInk device, and they seem to be pushing eInk devices into obscurity. Ten years from now who knows what we will have to read on. Perhaps a watch-size device that can create a 3D holographic display many tens of feet in length with much greater resolution and color depth than anything we have today. I suspect that any company that is still trying to develop eInk devices 10 years from now will be urinating into a very strong wind, and getting the result they deserve!

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by wodin

Bendable electronic paper displays whole color range



They don't say how it works, just that it's got gold and silver in it so it's bound to be expensive.

There is actually at least a small amount of gold in virtually all of your electronics. It's uses in places where corrosion would be an issue. The issue is quantity.

The article says that the expense currently is from an excessive amount of gold that gets wasted in the manufacturing process.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Yes, absolutely. What I am missing in the article is the power consumption. I mean, they say uses less energy than a Kindle tablet. They must mean eink Kindle? Because the Fire tablets are nothing special, no more or less energy hungry than any other tablet.

They separately mention tablets, so they must mean eInk Kindles.

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

But, if they mean eink it still doesn't make sense since it costs NO energy to keep the the display static, but a huge amount of energy to change it.

So reducing the amount of memory to change the display might be what they've done?

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by chrisridd

They separately mention tablets, so they must mean eInk Kindles.

They mention "Kindle tablets" unless it is a typo or missing punctuation. ETA: You are right, just looked again, and they mention once that Kindle tablets use less energy than led tablets (whatever that is, either led backlid lcd or oled). Still, not a valid statement unless mostly static images are concerned.

So reducing the amount of memory to change the display might be what they've done?

I am not sure that this new display is a mechanical display like eink. Eink is so slow to change, because the black and white "ink" particles have to physically change location. The optical properties in eink never change, we just get to see the dark side or the light side of the moon on the surface. This new display, I suspect, is changing the optical quality of the material on a molecular basis similar to lcd. What I am unsure of is how they manage to get the display so thin - it would seam rather impossible to have anything suspended in liquid like lcd and still be that bendable.

Alas, the article was far less technical than I wished for.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I suspect that any company that is still trying to develop eInk devices 10 years from now [...]

It takes a long time to go from a lab demo to a commercial product.

The first electrophoretic patent was in October 1996 - twenty years ago. The E-Ink company was started in 1997. The first commercial E-Ink screen in an Ebook reader was the Sony Libre in 2004, eight years after the first lab demos, and mass market use in the Amazon Kindle only appeared in 2007.

The first Mirasol display patent was in 1998, but the first commercial mirasol display in an ebook reader wasn't until the end of 2011 (& that was a failure).

The first Liquavista patent was in 2003 or so. We have yet to see a commercial Ebook reader using an electro-wetting display. (Although I'm hoping that Amazon will release one 'soon'.)

So this new technology is interesting, but will take a long time before we see it in a commercial product, if ever.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

...

Alas, the article was far less technical than I wished for.

That was my thought too, although you expressed it much more succinctly.

[chrisridd]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

So this new technology is interesting, but will take a long time before we see it in a commercial product, if ever.

This is also my fear. Given that there are fewer mainstream ereader brands around nowadays, it seems somewhat possible that the market just disappears by the time this tech becomes commercially viable.

I think that tablets will basically take more and more of the ereader market over time.

[chrisridd]

There's another story about the same paper at TechCrunch.

It has a few more details, including the potential pixel density (up to 10k dpi) and refresh rate (2-3Hz). There's a link to the actual academic paper which is behind a paywall.

[badgoodDeb]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I suspect that any company that is still trying to develop eInk devices 10 years from now will be urinating into a very strong wind, and getting the result they deserve!

Originally Posted by chrisridd

This is also my fear. Given that there are fewer mainstream ereader brands around nowadays, it seems somewhat possible that the market just disappears by the time this tech becomes commercially viable.

I think that tablets will basically take more and more of the ereader market over time.

I'm guessing that both of you are young? When tablets start bothering your eyes, you will be praying that eink doesn't disappear. It was a godsend when it first appeared. I go home from my computer screen, and sigh with relief as I rest my eyes on my eink screen for the rest of the night.