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| Paper turns over a new leaf |
March 14, 2006 |
By Danny Bradbury
Gyricon seemed like a company on the VERY cusp of great things. A subsidiary of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), it was about to market a revolutionary digital paper that could retain its image without an electrical charge; it would only draw battery power when the image changed. That alone was enough to upend an electronics industry that churned out laptops, PDAs and game devices reliant on power-hungry displays. The fact that Gyricon’s displays also promised excellent image resolution was a bonus.
Gyricon was already putting its technology into dynamically changeable signs for university lecture halls, enabling class information to be updated from a central point. It was also getting into smart labels for superstores with dynamically changing pricing.
Unfortunately, while its displays could survive without power, Gyricon couldn’t survive without PARC. On Dec. 31 last year, Xerox’s research group pulled the plug. The company did not explain the decision beyond emphasizing the need for maximum shareholder value and promising to license any relevant intellectual property.
LCD downsides
The e-paper promise is enticing because current LCD technology comes with significant drawbacks. On top of the power demands, LCDs are expensive to make and buy, in part because the fabrication plants are horrendously costly to build. And the construction price rises steeply for larger LCD displays.
Then there is the resolution issue: the highest image quality an LCD can produce trails that of most material printed on a monochrome laser printer. And the very high contrast paper enables it to be read in broad daylight from a wide viewing angle. Most LCD screens cannot match this performance.
“If we want to replace paper we have to come up with something similar,” said Hadi Mahabadi, vice-president and director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC), another of Xerox’s five global research labs. “We need low cost, flexibility and high resolution.”
E-paper options
Luckily, Gyricon wasn’t the only company working on new types of display technology. Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink produces electronic ink displays which are printed onto long rolls of film and can be cut to suit the required display size. Tiny black and white particles rest in microscopic fluid-filled microcapsules embedded in the film. When positive current is applied to a microcapsule, the white particles rise to the surface and the black particles fall to the bottom, making the capsule appear white. When the current is reversed, the black particles rise and the white ones fall so the capsule appears black.
In this way, an image is created through the manipulation of tiny dots that can be either black or white.
This technology, which again only draws current when an image changes, has the potential for more than just digital paper, said E Ink’s senior marketing manager Darren Bischoff. Unlike LCD displays, which print pixels onto unwieldy glass substrates, E Ink’s film is put onto a thin, flexible plastic substrate, which makes it possible to construct curved units.
At the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, some E Ink partners showed off possible applications. Ambient Devices launched a wireless E Ink-based weather station that downloads data over Ambient’s U.S.-only radio network. The display lasts two years on two AAA batteries. Lexar plans to ship a USB key with a memory meter printed on the side in digital ink. Sony will launch Sony Reader, a version of its 170 dpi Japanese eBook reader, in the U.S. this spring. Reader will offer 7,500 page flips between charges. And Seiko will launch its natty E Ink “paper watch” in Japan this summer.
U.K.-based Plastic Logic has created a flexible 10-inch SVGA four-greyscale display using E Ink. It offers just 100 dpi today, but vice-president of business development, Simon Jones, said the company has reached 300 dpi in the labs. Initial applications include electronically updated signs, e-readers attached to cellphones for downloading content and low-power PDA displays.
Still, this technology is far from perfect. Refresh rates cannot produce full-motion video yet, and even when this is possible, constant refreshes would negate the power benefits of the technology. The other problem is that digital ink technology is still largely restricted to greyscale.
That, too, may change. Plastic Logic will produce 512-colour prototypes next year, while at the end of this year, E Ink will start mass producing a prototype 12-bit colour, 83-dpi display it unveiled in October. In the meantime, Fujitsu is preparing a colour display printed on thin, flexible material. Its projected date for e-books, portable media devices and even advertising is 2008.
Mahabadi said XRCC is prepping printed organic electronics which promise 300-dpi colour images with video-quality refresh rates. Look for large-format roll-up TVs by 2010 to 2012, he said, but expect small applications for the technology in the next three years. He believes this technology could be used to create smart packaging—imagine a carton that informs consumers when its milk is too warm.
XRCC’s technology could pick up where Gyricon’s left off, but one truth in the digital paper world is that nothing is written in stone.
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