US electrophoretic display firm E Ink has built a full-colour electronic paper display “that is suitable for production”, it claims, and has also revealed a flexible 10in. monochrome prototype.
“No one has ever shown a low-power colour display that looks this good and can be mass manufactured in a practical way,” claimed E Ink CEO Russ Wilcox, “The gates are finally open for product designers to use colour electronic paper in mobile devices.”
Fabricated in collaboration with optical filter maker Toppan Printing, the 150mm diagonal 400x300 pixel prototype has 12-bit colour and 83pixel/inch resolution.
The filter makes red, green, blue and white sub-pixels. “That preserves the paper-like whiteness of the background page while enabling deep blacks for text and a range of colours and tones for images,” said E Ink.
Mass production of colour electronic paper displays is expected to start at the end of 2006, with future plans for flexible versions, said E Ink.
The larger flexible display, built with LG.Philips has a 256mm diagonal. Less than 300µm thick, the device has SVGA (600x800) resolution at 100pixels/inch and a 10:1 contrast ratio with four grey levels.
The substrate is a steel foil from Nippon Steel. “The flexible foil is a super-thin, extremely flat, high-performance steel that can easily withstand the high temperatures of a TFT production process,” said E Ink.
LG.Philips manufactured the flexible display panel at an existing pilot TFT line in Korea.
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