Flexible electronic ink display using plastic transistors demonstrated
24 January 2001
News
E Ink Corporation and Lucent Technologies have demonstrated working prototypes of a flexible, paper-like electronic displays built on thin sheets of plastic. Produced just one year after the development project was announced, these devices prove that electronic ink, driven with printed plastic circuits, is a compelling design for electronic paper and other next-generation displays.
The prototypes consist of a 161 cm2 display area made up of several hundred pixels. The displays were constructed using two ground-breaking developments: E Ink's electronic ink, and Lucent's active-matrix drive circuits printed on plastic, which were developed by Bell Labs, Lucent's research and development unit.
Bell Labs says that the transistors in these circuits are made of plastic materials and are fabricated with a low-cost printing process that uses high-resolution rubber stamps. Their switching properties are similar to typical thin film transistors made with silicon and conventional fabrication methods, but they are mechanically flexible, rugged and lightweight. The electronic ink enables the display's paper-like qualities: extraordinary brightness and contrast under a wide range of lighting conditions; easy viewing from all angles; low power consumption; and plastic film construction.
According to the researchers, its contrast ratio of more than 10 to 1 exceeds that of newspapers, which typically have a contrast ratio of 8 to 1 or less. Because of its bistable and reflective nature and because it only needs to be powered during a switching cycle, the flexible display draws only one-tenth to one-thousandth the power of an LCD of equivalent size. The initial prototype can display both text and simple graphic images while being flexed.
See www.lucent.com or www.eink.com
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