Philips offers new e-ink possibilities in color

Rather than using e-paper technology just for displays, the research arm of Dutch technology company Philips Electronics has developed a relatively cheap, light, thin and energy efficient means of turning the whole of the surface of a device into a digital canvas. E-skin pixel manipulation sees different colored particles in a clear suspension activated by an electric field to produce a single vivid color pixel or a mix of colors and shades.

Electronic paper (e-paper) utilizes a process called electrophoresis where colored particles in a clear suspension carrying a surface charge are controlled by administering an electric field perpendicular to the surface, forcing them to gather at the top of a pixel and so creating darkened areas. Placing activated and non-activated pixels together forms words and pictures.

In developing its electronic skin (e-skin) technology, Philips researchers applied the charge parallel to the surface causing independently controlled charged color particles to spread across the pixel. When the pixel is reset, the particles are masked and the pixel returns to a transparent state. The researchers incorporated a gate electrode into each pixel to control the color saturation or shape of each color.

The upshot is that instead of only using such technology within the confines of a dedicated display area, e-skin can be used on the whole surface of a device. So it could change the color of a mobile phone to alert the user of an incoming call, change the appearance of a kettle to indicate when water has boiled or change the appearance of a gaming device to match the mood of the game being played.

Read more . . .

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Tags: digital canvas, e-ink, electronic paper, electrophoresis, paper technology, philips researchers

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Communications, Cutting-edge Research, Innovation, gizmag. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.