Electronic paper and e-paper are display devices that mimic the appearance of plain ink on paper. Unlike conventional backlit flat panel displays that emit light, the appearance of electronic paper reflects light like paper. This can make them more comfortable to read, and provides a wider viewing angle than most light-emitting displays. The contrast ratio in electronic displays was available in 2008 before the newspapers, and new (2008) displays developed slightly better. The ideal e-paper view can be read in direct sunlight without faded images.
Many electronic paper technologies hold static text and unlimited images without electricity. Flexible electronic paper using plastic and plastic electronic substrate for backplane display. There is an ongoing competition among manufacturers to provide full-color capabilities.
Electronic visual display apps include electronic price tags in retail stores and digital signage, time tables at bus stations, electronic billboards, smartphone displays, and e-readers can display digital versions of books and magazines.
Video Electronic paper
Technology
Gyricon
Electronic paper was first developed in the 1970s by Nick Sheridon at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. The first electronic paper, called Gyricon, consists of a polyethylene sphere of between 75 and 106 micrometers. Each ball is a janus particle consisting of a negatively charged black plastic on one side and a positively charged white plastic on the other (each bead is thus a dipole). The balls are embedded in transparent silicone sheets, with each ball sustained in an oil bubble so they can spin freely. The voltage polarity applied to each pair of electrodes then determines whether the white or black side is facing upwards, thus giving the pixels a white or black appearance. At the 2008 FPD show, Japanese company Soken showed the wall with electronic wall paper using this technology. In 2007, Estonian company Visitret Displays is developing this kind of look using polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as the material for the ball, dramatically increasing video speed and reducing control voltage.
Electrophoretic
In a simple implementation of the electrophoretic display, titanium dioxide (titania) particles are about one micrometer in diameter dispersed in hydrocarbon oil. Dark dyes are also added to the oil, along with surfactants and fillers that cause the particles to take an electrical charge. This mixture is placed between two parallel, conductive plates separated by a gap of 10 to 100 micrometers. When the tension is applied to two plates, the particles migrate electrophoretically onto the plates that bear the opposite charge of the particle. When the particles are in front of the (display) side of the screen, it appears white, because the light is scattered back to the viewer by high index titania particles. When the particles are on the back side of the screen, it looks dark, because the light coming is absorbed by the colored dye. If the rear electrode is divided into a number of small image elements (pixels), then an image can be formed by applying a suitable voltage to each viewing region to create a pattern that reflects and absorbs the area.
The electrophoretic display is considered a prime example of the category of electronic paper, due to its paper-like appearance and low power consumption.
Examples of commercial electrophoretic displays include high resolution active matrix screens used in Amazon Kindle, Barnes & amp; Noble Nook, Sony Librie, Sony Reader, Kobo eReader and iRex iLiad e-reader. This display is built from electrophoretic imaging films made by E Ink Corporation. The phone that uses the technology is Motorola Fone.
Display Technology Electrophoresis has also been developed by Sipix and Bridgestone/Delta. SiPix is âânow part of E Ink. The Sipix design uses a flexible, 0.15 mm flexible Microcup architecture, not the E4K diameter microcapsule. The Advanced Materials Division of Bridgestone Corp. in collaboration with Delta Optoelectronics Inc. in developing Quick Response Liquid Powder Display (QR-LPD) technology.
The electrophoretic display can be produced using the Electronics on Plastic process by Laser Release (EPLaR) developed by Philips Research to enable existing AM-LCD manufacturing plants to create flexible plastic displays.
Microencapsulated electrophoretic display
An electrophoretic display forms an image by rearranging charged pigment particles with the applied electric field.
In the 1990s another type of electronic ink was based on the microencapsulated electrophoretic display conceived and made prototypes by a team of scholars at MIT as described in their Nature paper. J.D. Albert, Barrett Comiskey, Joseph Jacobson, Jeremy Rubin and Russ Wilcox founded E Ink Corporation in 1997 to commercialize the technology. Ink then formed a partnership with Philips Components two years later to develop and market the technology. In 2005, Philips sold its electronic paper business and related patents to Prime View International.
"It has for years been the ambition of researchers in display media to create a flexible low cost system that is an analog electronic paper.In this context, microparticle-based displays have long-drawn researchers.Contrastable contrast in such a display is achieved by electromigration of highly scattering or absorbing microparticles (in the 0.1-5 mm size range), are quite different from the molecular-scale properties that govern the behavior of a more familiar view of the liquid crystal. Micro-particle-based surfaces have intrinsic bistabilities, indicating field addressing power dc is very low and has shown high contrast and high reflections.These features, combined with the characteristics of close look lambertian, produce the appearance of 'ink on paper'.But this kind of display should be corrected from short life span and difficulty in making. here we report the synthesis of the elect ink roforetics based on the microencapsulation of electrophoretic dispersions. Microencapsulated electrophoretic media solves lifetime problems and enables the creation of bistable electronic displays simply by printing. This system can meet the practical requirements of electronic paper. "
It uses a small microcapsule filled with white charged particles that are suspended in colored oil. In earlier versions, the underlying circuit is controlled whether the white particles are at the top of the capsule (so it looks white to the viewer) or at the bottom of the capsule (so viewers see the color of the oil). This is basically the reintroduction of famous electrophoretic display technology, but microcapsules mean screens can be made on flexible plastic sheets instead of glass. One early version of electronic paper consists of a very small piece of transparent capsule, each about 40 micrometers. Each capsule contains an oily solution containing black dye (electronic ink), with many white titanium dioxide particles suspended in it. The particles are slightly negatively charged, and each is white. The screen holds the microcapsule in a liquid polymer layer, flanked by two arrays of electrodes, which are transparent on top. Two arrays are aligned to divide the sheet into pixels, and each pixel corresponds to a pair of electrodes located on either side of the sheet. The sheets are laminated with transparent plastic for protection, resulting in an overall thickness of 80 micrometers, or twice of ordinary paper. The electrode network is connected to display circuits, which convert electronic inks 'on' and 'off' on certain pixels by applying a voltage to a particular electrode pair. A negative charge to the surface electrode repels the particles to the bottom of the local capsule, forcing the black dye to the surface and rotating the black pixel. Reversing the voltage has the opposite effect. It forces the particles to the surface, turning the pixels to white. More recent implementation of this concept requires only one layer of electrode under the microcapsules.
Electrowetting
Display electro-wetting (EWD) is based on the control of the water/oil interface shape limited by the applied voltage. Without applied stress, the oil (color) forms a flat film between the water and the electrophobic (waterproof) insulating layer of the electrode, producing a colored pixel. When a voltage is applied between the electrode and water, the interface voltage between the water and the layer changes. As a result, the stacked state is no longer stable, causing water to move the oil sideways. This makes the pixels partially transparent, or, if the reflective white surface is below the replaceable element, white pixels. Due to the small pixel size, users experience only average reflections, which provide elements with high brightness, high contrast that can be replaced.
Display based on electro-wetting provides some interesting features. The transition between white and color reflections is fast enough to display video content. It is low-power and low-voltage technology, and the display based on the effect can be made flat and thin. Reflectivity and contrast are better than or equal to other types of reflective displays and close to the visual quality of paper. Additionally, this technology offers a unique pathway to full color display with high brightness, which leads to a display that is four times brighter than the reflective LCD and two times brighter than other new technologies. Instead of using red, green and blue (RGB) filters or alternating segments of the three main colors, which effectively produce only one-third of the screen that reflects light in the desired color, the electro wetting allows for a system where one sub- pixel can switch two different colors independently.
This results in the availability of two-thirds of the display area to reflect light in any desired color. This is achieved by building a pixel with a stack of two independently controlled color oil films plus a color filter.
The colors are cyan, magenta and yellow, which are subtractive systems, comparable to the principles used in inkjet printing for example. Compared with LCD, brightness is obtained because no polarisers are required.
Examples of commercial electrowet displays include Liquavista, ITRI, and ADT.
Electrofluidic
Displays Electrofluidic is a variation of electrowetting display. Electrofluidic displays place an aqueous pigment dispersion inside a small reservoir. Reservoir consists of & lt; 5-10% of the visible pixel area and therefore the pigment is substantially hidden from view. Voltage is used to electromechanically pull the pigment out of the reservoir and spread it as a film just behind the display substrate. As a result, the display takes on color and brightness similar to the conventional pigments printed on paper. When the voltage is removed the liquid surface tension causes the pigment dispersion to rapidly retreat into the reservoir. As reported in the Photonic May 2009 Natural Edition, this technology has the potential to provide & gt; 85% reflectance of white states for electronic paper.
The core technology is found at the Novel Device Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati. The technology is currently being commercialized by Gamma Dynamics.
Interferometric modulator (Mirasol)
Technology used in electronic visual display that can create various colors through reflected light disturbance. Colors are selected with an electrically activated light modulator consisting of microscopic cavities that are switched on and off using integrated driver circuits similar to those used to overcome the liquid crystal display (LCD).
Plasmonic electronic display
Plasma nanostructures with conductive polymers have also been suggested as one type of electronic paper. The material has two parts. The first part is a highly reflective metasurface made by metal-insulator-metal film with a thickness of tens of nanometers including a nano hole. Metasurfaces can reflect different colors depending on the thickness of the insulator. The three main colors red, green and blue can be used as pixels to display full color. The second part is a polymer with optical absorption that can be controlled by an electrochemical potential. After growing the polymer on the plasmonic metasurfaces, the reflection of metasurfaces can be modulated by a given voltage. This technology presents various colors, high independent polarization reflections (& gt; 50%), strong contrast (& gt; 30%), fast response time (hundreds of ms), and long term stability. In addition, it has ultralow power consumption (& lt; 0.5 mW/cm2) and potential for high resolution (& gt; 10000 dpi). Because of the flexible ultrathin metasurfaces and soft polymers, the entire system can be bent. Future improvements desired for this technology include bistability, cheaper materials and implementation with TFT arrangement.
More bistable look
- Plastic Logic, manufacturer of flexible plastic electrophoretic displays
- Kent Displays, maker of cholesteric liquid crystal display (ChLCD)
- Nemopia, nematic material
- TRED
- Sharp Memory LCD, used in Pebble smartwatch.
Other technologies
Other research efforts into e-paper have involved the use of organic transistors embedded in flexible substrates, including attempts to make them into conventional paper. Simple color e-paper consists of a thin-colored optical filter added to the monochrome technology described above. The pixel array is divided into triads, usually consisting of standard cyan, magenta and yellow, in the same way as CRT monitors (although using subtractive primer colors as opposed to additional primary colors). The screen is then controlled like any other electronic color display.
Examples of electrochromic displays include Acreo, Ajjer, Aveso and Ntera.
Maps Electronic paper
Disadvantages
Electronic paper technology has a very low refresh rate compared to other low power display technologies, such as LCD. This prevents manufacturers from implementing sophisticated interactive apps (using fast-moving menus, mouse or scrolling) as is common on standard mobile devices. An example of this limit is that the document can not be enlarged smoothly without extreme blurring during a very slow transition or zoom.
The other limit is the image shadow may look after the refreshing part of the screen. Such shadows are called "ghost images", and the effect is called "ghosting". This effect is reminiscent of a burn-in screen but, unlike a burning screen, is solved after the screen has been refreshed several times. Changing each pixel to white, then black, then white, helps normalize pixel contrast. This is why some devices with this technology "flash" entire white and black screen while loading new images.
E Ink Corporation of E Ink Holdings Inc. released the first colored e-ink display for use in marketed products. Ectaco Jetbook Color was released in 2012 as the first color e-ink e-reader, which uses Triton E-In display technology. E Ink in early 2015 also announced another color e-ink technology called Prism. This new technology is a color change film that can be used for e-reader, but Prism is also marketed as a film that can be integrated into architectural design such as "wall, ceiling panel, or the whole room instantly." The disadvantage of the current color display is much more expensive than the standard E Ink view. The JetBook Color costs about nine times more than other popular e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. In January 2015, Prism has not been announced for use in plans for e-reader devices.
Apps
Some companies simultaneously develop paper and electronic ink. While the technology used by each company provides many of the same features, each has its own technological advantages. All electronic paper technologies face the following common challenges:
- Encapsulation method
- Ink or active ingredients to fill encapsulation
- Electronics to enable ink â ⬠<â â¬
Electronic inks can be applied to flexible or rigid materials. For flexible viewing, the base requires a thin and flexible material strong enough to withstand large wear, such as a very thin plastic. The method of how the ink is formulated and then applied to the substrate is what separates each company from the other. These processes are complex and carefully guarded industrial secrets. Nevertheless, making electronic paper is not too complicated and expensive than LCD.
There are many approaches to electronic paper, with many companies developing technology in this field. Other technologies applied to electronic paper include modifications of the liquid crystal display, electrochromic displays, and electronic equivalents of Etch A Sketch at Kyushu University. The advantages of electronic paper include low power usage (power is only taken when screen is updated), flexibility and better readability than most screens. Electronic ink can be printed on any surface, including walls, billboards, product labels, and T-shirts. The ink flexibility will also allow for the development of rollable displays for electronic devices.
Watch
In December 2005 Seiko released the first electronic ink-based watch called the Spectrum SVRD001 watch, which has a flexible electrophoretic look and in March 2010 Seiko released the second generation of this famous e-ink watch with an active matrix display. The Pebble (2013) smart clock uses a low power LCD manufactured by Sharp for its e-paper display.
eBook reader
In 2004 Sony released LibriÃÆ'à © in Japan, the first e-book reader with E Ink electronic paper screen. In September 2006, Sony released Reader eBook Reader PRS-500 Sony in the United States. On October 2, 2007, Sony announced PRS-505, the latest version of Readers. In November 2008, Sony released PRS-700BC, which incorporated backlight and touch screen.
In late 2007, Amazon began producing and marketing the Amazon Kindle, an e-book reader with e-paper viewing. In February 2009, Amazon released Kindle 2 and in May 2009, a larger Kindle DX was announced. In July 2010 the third-generation Kindle was announced, with renowned design changes. The fourth generation Kindle, called the Touch, was announced in September 2011 ie the Kindle's first departure from the keyboard and the turn button of the page that supports the touch screen. In September 2012, Amazon announced its fifth-generation Kindle called Paperwhite, which incorporates LED headlamps and a higher contrast display.
In November 2009, Barnes and Noble unveiled Barnes & amp; Noble Nook, runs the Android operating system. This is different from other e-readers in having a replaceable battery, and a separate color touch-screen LCD beneath the main electronic paper reading screen.
In 2017 Sony and reMarkable offer e-books designed to write with a smart stylus.
Newspapers
In February 2006, the daily Flemish De Tijd distributed an electronic version of the paper to select customers in limited marketing studies, using iRex iLiad pre-release version. This is the first recorded electronic ink application for newspaper publishing.
The French daily Les ÃÆ' â ⬠° chos announced the official launch of an electronic version of this paper by subscription, in September 2007. Two offers are available, incorporating a one year subscription and reading device. Offers include light reading device (176g) (adapted for Les Echos by Ganaxa) or iRex iLiad. Two different processing platforms are used to provide daily readable information, one based on the newly developed GPP electronic ink platform from Ganaxa , and the other developed internally by Les Echos.
Displays embedded in smart card
Flexible display cards allow financial payment cardholders to generate a one-time password to reduce online banking and transaction fraud. The electronic paper offers a flat and thin alternative to the existing fob lock tokens for data security. The world's first ISO compliant intelligent card with embedded screen was developed by Innovative Card Technologies and nCryptone in 2005. These cards are made by Nagra ID.
Status display
Some devices, such as USB flash drives, have used electronic paper to display status information, such as available storage space. Once the image on the electronic paper has been set, it does not require power to maintain, so the readings can be viewed even when the flash drive is not installed.
Mobile
Motorola's cheap phone, Motorola F3, uses an alphanumeric black-and-white electrophoretic screen.
Samsung Alias âââ ⬠<â ⬠<2 mobile phones incorporate electronic ink from E Ink into the keypad, allowing the keypad to change character sets and orientations while in different display modes.
On December 12, 2012, Yota Devices announced the first "YotaPhone" prototype and then released in December 2013, a unique dual-screen smartphone. It has a 4.3 inch HD LCD on the front and an e-ink screen on the back with smart battery usage.
Electronic rack label
E-Paper-based electronic label rack (ESL) is used to digitally display the price of goods at a retail store. Electronic paper-based labels are updated via infrared technology or two-way radios.
Digital nameplate
Due to the energy-saving nature, electronic paper has proven a suitable technology for digital signage applications.
More
Other proposed applications include clothing, digital photo frames, information boards and keyboards. Dynamic keyboards with dynamic keys can be useful for underrepresented languages, nonstandard keyboard layouts like Dvorak, or for special non-alphabetical applications such as video editing or games.
Display manufacturer
- E Ink Holdings Inc.
- Liquavista âââ ⬠<â â¬
- LG LG.Philips LCD invented the world's first flexible E-paper in October 2005.
- NEC
- Plastic Logic
- Polymer Vision
- Samsung
- Seiko Epson
See also
- The history of display technology
- Electrofluidic
- Flexible electronics
- E-book
References
Further reading
- Electrical paper, New Scientist, 2003
- E-paper can offer video images, New Scientist, 2003
- The paper comes alive New Scientist, 2003
- The most flexible electronic paper has not been revealed, New Scientist, 2004
- The digital display rolls closer to the New Scientist market, 2005
External links
- Wired article on E Ink-Philips partnership, and background
- Bosner, Kevin. How Electronic Ink Will Work on HowStuffWorks, taken on 2007-08-26
- The MIT ePaper project
- Tanaka, Naoki (2007-12-06). "Fuji Xerox Shows Color Electronic Paper with Optical Writing System". Japan: Tech-On . Retrieved 2007-12-10 . Ã,
- Fujitsu Develops World's First Substrate-Based Shredded Electronic Movie Paper featuring Image Memory Functions
Source of the article : Wikipedia