December 1999
E-paper Heads to Market
by Ross Thompson
Here’s an alternative to tree-based paper: paper that’s plastic, both in composition and in the adjectival sense of something malleable. We’re talking about electronic paper.
Visualize a sheet of paper that gets fed through something like a laser printer. It has the same crisp look as a laser print; it’s quite readable — oops, there’s a typo. Fix the word processing file, then feed that same sheet through the printer again. There — perfect.
How is this possible? Independent researchers at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab have developed a technology for coating thin sheets of plastic with microscopic capsules of "electronic ink" that change from white to black to white depending on the state of an electric charge. Once charged, the ink retains its state without a power supply.
What is this electronic ink? Imagine a teeny, tiny ping pong ball with one black and one white hemisphere encased in a slightly larger, transparent, fluid-filled sphere. This black and white ball can be made to rotate in response to an electric charge and show either its black side or its white side. This is one type of electronic ink. Xerox calls its version "gyricon." Another version suspends much tinier white particles in a dark blue fluid within a transparent sphere. The applied charge either attracts the white particles to the exposed side of the sphere or forces them down into the murky blue depths. The process this version uses is known as electrophoresis.
The electric charge can be applied by the printer-like device or it can be carried by a printed-on grid of transparent plastic transistors developed at Bell Labs. This grid can also function as a radio antenna, while other transistor inks can function as radio receivers. The result may be called radio paper. A sheet of this paper could receive FM news broadcasts and typeset itself into your daily newspaper.
Researchers believe such paper could be re-used thousands of times. Bind a few hundred sheets into a book, put some electronics in the spine with a port for input and you could carry a whole library in your hand. Other uses include advertising displays (already in use), programmable price tags, ultra light screens for laptop computers, cell phones, pagers — really anywhere a changeable sign, label, or display is needed.
An attractive feature is the ability to manufacture these displays with traditional printing or silk-screening methods. This could drastically reduce the cost of portable computing devices, since a typical laptop display costs around $1000.
The key players in this developing market are Xerox (in partnership with 3M), and a new company called E Ink Corporation working with Lucent Technologies, the commercial arm of Bell Labs. Xerox PARC researchers have worked on the concept since 1978 but only recently shifted it onto the front burner. Perhaps they were spurred by the independent invention of very similar technology by MIT’s Joseph Jacobson, who took the prudent step of writing patents for the process.
Jacobson’s team at the Media Lab also developed the electrophoretic variety of electronic ink and have licensed the process to E Ink. The company’s first applications were the above mentioned advertising displays deployed in a few retail stores early in 1999. You can play a clever animation of the new technology on E Ink’s web site (you need the Flash Player plug-in). Through their partnership with Lucent, E Ink plans to bring electronic paper to market within the next year. Xerox and 3M also expect to enter the market in 2000.
Resources
For a detailed account of Jacobson’s work click here.
Xerox has a short description and some photos.
The Micromedia department of the Media Lab has an animation of the rotating sphere approach and descriptions of their related projects.
E Ink Corporation
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