Showing posts with label epaper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epaper. Show all posts
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Bright, full color e paper under development by Ricoh
This e-paper is currently under development by Ricoh.
It has a unique structure, with layers of a new electrochromic material that turn magenta, yellow, and cyan from their transparent state. In this way, Ricoh's e-paper enables a bright, full-color display, like ordinary paper, which hasn't been possible with e-paper until now.
This prototype is a 3.5-inch, QVGA display, with a pixel density of 113.6 ppi. Its reflectivity is 70%. Compared with current color-filter displays, this e-paper is 2.5 times brighter. It has a color reproduction range of 35%, higher than that of a newspaper, which is 31% in Japan.
"To produce colors, CMY subtractive mixing is ideal, and that's the model used in printing. We've implemented this by coating the panel with layers of yellow, magenta, and cyan. Ordinarily, if you try to use layers like this, you need an electrode driver for each layer. But in this display we're developing, the electrodes are active TFTs. So, we can achieve all colors with a single TFT, by switching the electrodes on the display side."
The material used for the chromic layers is transparent in its oxidized state, but becomes colored when it's reduced. To achieve a color display, rewriting is done three times in the order magenta, yellow, cyan. As the spaces between the electrochromic layers are narrow, at about 2 microns, the result is an ideal color-mixing display.
"The stage we're at right now is, we're checking that this model works with an actual active panel. Regarding the color drive, we haven't refined this yet, so switching takes over a second for each color. But the reaction speed of the chromic material is, ideally, about 100 ms."
"From now on, we'd like to increase the size to 6 inches, then 10 inches. We also want to work on achieving stable driving and faster response."
Friday, May 02, 2014
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sony's 13-inch Digital Paper is the first device to use a flexible e-ink display
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/179386-sonys-13-inch-digital-paper-is-the-first-device-to-use-a-flexible-e-ink-display
After almost a year of agonizing posturing by Sony, the semi-flexible 13.3-inch Digital Paper has finally been unveiled. For $1100, you can get your hands on the thinnest, lightest A4-sized e-ink tablet. The Digital Paper supports stylus input, has built-in WiFi, and lasts up to three weeks on a single charge. The key technology here is the new Mobius display from E Ink, which is very light and highly flexible — though it isn’t clear how much of that flexibility made it into the final Digital Paper product.
When it comes to displays, the problem — as far as weight and flexibility are concerned — has always been the substrate. The liquid crystals, the organic diodes, the capsules of ink, the transistors, the wiring — all of the key display stuff is already light and flexible. But you have to build all of that stuff on something heat-resistant and transparent — i.e. glass. Glass is heavy (especially at larger sizes), and it’s very brittle (especially when it’s thin, which is necessitated by weight constraints). Glass is a terrible display substrate, basically, but sadly there hasn't been another option. Until now.
In the last few years, thanks to the development of new materials and low-temperature manufacturing techniques, it’s now possible to build displays with plastic substrates. These plastic displays are cheaper, lighter, and flexible (and thus more resistant to certain kinds of damage, too). Enter E Ink Mobius, which is basically the same e-ink tech as Pearl or Carta (found in various Kindles and other e-book readers), but on a flexible substrate. The E Ink website says that the Mobius display is 13.3 inches on the diagonal (i.e. the size of a piece of A4 or letter paper), with a resolution of 1600×1200 and the ability to show 16 levels of grayscale.
Sony’s Digital Paper, with stylus
When we first saw the technology back in May 2013, Sony helpfully had some of the Mobius displays outside of their chassis, so that you could marvel at their flexibility. Unfortunately, for the commercialized version of Digital Paper, there is once again a plastic bezel around the outside of the display. The Digital Paper website says nothing about flexibility, but in the video you can see some Digital Paper prototypes that appear to be at least semi-flexible, or not entirely rigid. In all likelihood, Digital Paper will probably flex a lot more than your iPad, and it will probably survive if you sit on it, or drop a book on it — but you can’t roll it up. That’s the next step, when we commercialize flexible batteries and circuitry.
At $1100 (shipping in May), Digital Paper is being pitched at education, business, and legal environments. Digital Paper appears to only support PDFs, but the website implies that software is included to convert Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files to PDF format. Stylus input appears to be accurate and high-resolution, though e-ink’s refresh latency might cause you some mental discomfort. 4GB of internal storage and a micro SD slot should give you plenty of space for annotating textbooks and documents. At just 357 grams (12.6 ounces), Digital Paper is by far the lightest large-screen tablet on the market, too (the iPad Air is a chunky 469 grams). Hopefully this is the beginning of an exciting, flexible-and-light-weight computing revolution!
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