Technical / Research - Page 8

A few days ago we reported about a new color e-paper prototype by Ricoh, and now we have some more details. Ricoh used a novel method which involves stacking three layers of electrochromic panels, one on top of the other, each reflecting different colors (yellow, cyan, magenta). This can create color pixels without sub pixels. All three layers are driven by one LTPS TFT.

The display on show was 3.5" in size (113ppi) with a 27% color gamut (NTSC).

Sony is showing a new OTFT driven E Ink prototype. The 13.3" panel offers 1200x1600 (150ppi) resolution, 10:1 contrast ratio, 16 shades of gray and can be bent to a curvature radius of at least 5mm. Indeed had a cool demo showing how the panel bends. This panel is monochrome (they also had a color 13.3" flexible e-paper prototype on show).

Sony uses Peri-Xanthenoxanthene (PXX) for the semiconductor layer of the organic TFT (this is the same OTFT used in Sony's OLED prototype unveiled in 2010).

Bookeen is showing some real time web page scrolling on an E Ink panel:

Pretty impressive, although they've already shown us smooth video playback on such a display. Now we're waiting for their upcoming fast e-reader...

Ricoh is showing a new color e-paper prototype. The company claims that it's 2.5 times brighter than any other e-paper technology, and have a wider color range (four times wider!).

Sony developed a 13.3" flexible color e-paper prototype (based on E Ink's EPD). The panel is only 150?m thick and weights 20g. The display features 800x1200 (75ppi) resolution,13% NSTC color gamut, 10% reflectance and 10:1 contrast ratio.

The prototype is made on a plastic substrate. Sony says that the key to high color gamut and reflectance was to attach a TFT substrate to an E Ink front plate with high precision (0.35?m), which reduced the margin between sub-pixels and increasing the aperture ratio of pixels. This is quite an achievement compared to the monochrome flexible prototype shown in September 2010.

Update: We found two videos (of the color and low-frequency displays), see below

Samsung is showing new Electrowetting 6.2" display prototypes. They are showing 3 different displays - a color reflective one, a mono reflective one and a low frequency one. We don't have any technical information yet...

E Ink and Epson announced today that they will co-develop 9.7" 300ppi displays. The resolution on such a display is 2,400x1,650. E Ink will develop the display panel while Epson will develop the high speed controller.

E Ink released a couple of very interesting videos. The first shows a SURF (segmented) E Ink display printed on cloth. E Ink are obviously thinking about wearable displays here:

The second video shows an E Ink display on a Tyvex cloth - which is a very durable cloth (used as insulation on houses and for shipping envelopes):

E Ink's Sri Peruvemba says that there's generally a two-year cycle in E Ink technology as it takes some time to develop and test new generation displays. Sri says that we shouldn't expect a new monochrome E Ink display (to replace the Pearl) in 2011. I guess we'll have to wait till 2012!

What we are likely to see soon are speed improvements - full-motion video (24fps) using updated drivers and faster processors. Bookeen has already been showing about 10-15fps video on Pearl displays.

Canada's Human Media Lab is showing a new flexible E Ink display prototype called Snaplet. This device is a wrist-mounted bracelet that has a touch display and shape sensing: when you open it up it automatically opens a notepad applications, and when you take it and curve it next to your ear it answers a phone call... pretty neat:

It's still pretty bulky of course, but this might be an interesting form factor for a phone. And it somewhat reminds us of the OLED bracelet that Universal Display and LG are developing for the US army: