CLEARink

Most people when they think about ePaper displays immediate think about E Ink. E Ink Holdings (EIH) has been very successful in bringing its ePaper displays to the market - and today these are prevalent in e-readers, electronic shelf labels, e-notebooks and many other applications. While EIH indeed has a clear leadership in the ePaper market, it is not alone.

But first of all, it is important to note that there are many display technologies that could be called ePaper displays. Most people would only consider truly bi-stable displays able to show dot-matrix images as ePaper displays, but some other technologies that are not truly bi-stable also exist and some consider these as ePaper displays as well - for example Memory LCDs. In addition some simpler displays technologies that are similar to ePaper in properties also exist. We will discuss both these technologies in this article.

CLEARink demonstrated their latest color e-paper displays at SID Displayweek 2019, and following is an interesting interview with the company's CEO Frank Christiaens and CMO (our good friend Sri Peruvemba):

CLEARink latest displays are 9.7" (227 PPI) and supports 4,096 colors. Frank says that CLEARink has over $300 million in confirmed commitments, mainly from the educational market. The company hopes to bring its first displays to the market by 2020.

CLEARink announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with China-based display maker Tianma to establish a partnership framework for developing CLEARink’s patented ePaper 2.0 displays

Tiama will develop TFT backplanes and module assemblies for CLEARinks next-generation e-paper displays for tablets, IoT displays and other applications.

Color e-paper developer CLEARink announced that Lenovo has become an investor in CLEARink, and the two companies will jointly-develop next-generation tablet devices based on CLEARink's displays.

In 2018 CLEARink announced that it has signed a $10 million supply agreement with a leading tablet maker to start supplying tablet displays beginning in 2019. It is likely that this leading tablet maker is Lenovo, which has now became an investor in CLEARink as well.

Color e-paper developer CLEARink demonstrated its latest wearable color e-paper displays at SID 2018. The most interesting display was a 1.32" 202 PPI color e-paper display that offer a color gamut of 30% NTSC (1931 CIE) which is not up to par with regular emissive displays but looks quite good for a reflective display.

CLEARink's displays are electrophoretic displays that achieve color using color filters on top of the display. The panels offer a fast refresh rate which supports video.

Color e-paper developer CLEARink announced that is has signed a supply agreement with a leading tablet maker to start supplying tablet displays beginning in 2019. The agreement calls for at least $10 million in initial orders.

The CLEARink-enabled tablets will feature sunlight visibility, high resolution video and color, and will offer a much higher battery life compared to LCD or OLED based tablets. This is CLEARink's first major supply agreement.

CLEARink announced that it signed a comprehensive materials development agreement with Merck with an aim to bring CLEARink's reflective display technology to the market by the end of 2017.

CLEARink displays are based on a specially designed reflector film that can vary its brightness by modulating the total internal reflection of ambient light from film. The display uses a single electrically charged particle suspended in a liquid. The technology is called TIR (Total Internal Reflection) and the company believes that its manufacturing costs will be lower compared to other reflective display technologies. The displays offer full-color, low power (slightly above E Ink), outdoor readability, low cost and video support (low latency).

E-paper developer CLEARink Displays announced that it has established a joint venture in China with Suzhou Jinfu to commercialize Clearink's breakthrough reflective display technology for various ePaper applications in China.

The new JV will target several applications - including mobile phones, wearable devices, tablets, eReaders and electronic shelf labels. Clearink aims to launch the first monochrome display early in 2017, and color displays in 2018.