March 2011

E Ink launched a new and interesting product today. It's a monochrome SURF E Ink display that is laminated behind color overlays. E Ink is launching the new product together with Sino Pac Bank and the Miramar department store, which will use these as flashing point-of-purchase displays in the food courts of Maramar department stores (in Taipei, Taiwan).

Those SURF displays can be made in a wide range of sizes: from a few inches to a few meters for billboards.

Researchers from the University of California developed a new display based on silica-coated nanoscale iron oxide rods. Those rods align themselves when a magnetic field is applied and they diffract light into color. This display is very low power and offers great sunlight visibility. They released a short demo of the rods under magnetic influence:

This research is in early stages, but the researchers already patented the technology and licensed it to (an undisclosed) company to commercialize.

E Ink says that they produce 10 million e-paper displays (EPDs) in 2010. They plan to increase this to 25 million in 2011. Most of these displays are 6" as this is the most popular e-reader size.