Electronic paper and perpetual printing technologies aim to replace conventional paper and printing. Electronic paper uses microcapsules of charged particles to mimic the appearance of ordinary paper and can be read in sunlight without using power. Perpetual printing allows reusing paper endlessly by applying voltages to rotate beads inside each paper cavity and create or erase text and images without using ink or toner. These technologies could help reduce paper usage but current high costs limit adoption for most users. Future generations may add color and faster refresh rates.

1. Electronic Paper
and
Perpetual Printing

2. ELECTRONIC PAPER AND
PERPETUAL PRINTING
- The future ahead…

3. Introduction
 Electronic paper and electronic ink are the emerging
technologies which would replace the conventional paper and
ink.
 Perpetual printing is a revolutionary printing technology which
uses electronic paper as its input and can print text and images
thousands of times on the same sheet of paper.
 Electronic paper was first developed in the 1970’s by Nick
Sheridon at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research center.
 Unlike conventional backlit flat panel displays which emit light,
E-paper displays reflect light like ordinary paper, theoretically
making it more comfortable to read, and giving the surface a
wider viewing angle compared to conventional displays.

4. Gyricon material
First electronic paper
Perpetual printer

5. What is an electronic paper?
 Electronic paper is a portable, reusable storage
and display medium designed to mimic the
appearance of ordinary paper.
 An electronic paper display can be read directly
in sun light without the image appearing to fade.
 It can hold text and images without using
electricity.

6. Features Of Electronic Paper
Form- Thin, light
weight, robust,
flexible.
Power- Ultra
low power.
Look- Bright,
high contrast,
full viewing
angle and
sunlight
readable.
6

7. Why electronic paper?
 In this world of limited resources caution has to be exercised on all
limited resources and one such resource which is facing exhaustion is
the paper.
 Tress are ruthlessly slaughtered to produce paper and it is estimated
that to produce one ton of paper 17 trees are chopped down.
 To prevent forest cover depletion e-paper was introduced but the
difficulty in reading it led to the invention of electronic paper.

8. Construction
 It has two different parts.
◦ Front plane.
◦ Back plane.
 The front plane consist of E-ink.
 The back plane consist of electronic circuits.
 Back plane is made up of organic thin film transistor arrays which
provide voltage needed by the E-Paper.
 To form an E-ink electronic display the ink is printed onto a plastic
film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry.

9. Back Plane Layout

10.  The front plane consist of E-ink.
 E-ink is made up of millions of tiny
microcapsules.
 Microcapsules have diameter of the order
of 100 microns.
 Each microcapsule contains positively
charged white particles and negatively
charged black particles suspended in a
clear fluid .
 When a positive or negative electric field
is applied, corresponding particles move
to the top of the microcapsule where they
become visible to the viewer. This makes
the surface appear white or black at that
spot.
Front plane
E-ink 2-pigment system

11. Technologies proposed :
 Gyricon
 Electrophoretic
 Electrowetting

12. Gyricon
 It was the first electronic paper and was developed in
1970’s.
 Consists of polyethylene spheres having diameter
between 75-106 micrometers.
 Each sphere is a janus particle composed of
negatively charged black plastic on one side and
positively charged white plastic on the other (each bead
is thus a dipole).
 These spheres are embedded in transparent silicone
made sheet, with each sphere suspended in a bubble
of oil so that they can rotate freely.
 The polarity of the voltage applied to each pair of
electrodes then determines whether the white or black
side is face-up, thus giving the pixel a white or black
appearance.
Limitations
 Low brightness and resolution
 Lack of colour

13. Electrophoretic
 This technology forms visible images by rearranging charged
pigment particles using an applied electric field.
 Titanium dioxide particles approximately one micrometer in
diameter are dispersed in hydrocarbon oil and a dark coloured dye
is also added.
 When voltage is applied across two plates the particles migrate to
the plate bearing opposite charges.
 When particles are located at the front (viewing) side of display it
appears white because light is scattered back to the viewer by the
titanium particles.
 When the particles are located at the rare side of display it appears
dark because the incident light is absorbed by the coloured dye.

14. The disadvantage of this technology is that it
takes more time for the particle to move from
one side to another.

15. Electrowetting
 Electrowetting uses a coloured oil and involves modifying
the surface tension of liquids on a solid surface using a voltage.
By applying a voltage, the wetting properties of a hydrophobic
surface can be modified and the surface becomes increasingly
hydrophilic.
 With Electrowetting displays, the modification of the surface
tension is used to obtain a simple optical switch by contracting
a coloured oil film electrically. Without a voltage, the coloured oil
forms a continuous film and the colour is visible to the
consumer
 When voltage is applied to the display pixel the oil is displaced
and the pixel becomes transparent. When different pixels are
independently activated, the display can show content like an
photograph or a video.
 The high switching speed (a few milliseconds) of electrowetting
and its applicability to small (pixel) dimensions means that
electrowetting is ideally suited for application to displays
showing video content.

17. Comparison of Electronic paper and
LCD
Electronic Ink
Display
Liquid Crystal
Display
Wide viewing angle Best image only from one
position
Black on paper white Gray on gray
Readable in sunlight Can be difficult to see
Holds image without power drain Required power to hold images
Plastic or glass Glass only
Light Weight Power supply and glass make
LCDs relatively heavy
Thin (~1 mm) Thick (~7 mm)

18. ADVANTAGES
 Paper like readability.
 Light weight
 Robust (will withstand being dropped or hit)
 Flexible and twistable
 Low power consumption
 Highly portable
 Ecofriendly

19. DISADVANTAGES
 Electronic paper technology has very low refresh rate
compared to other display technologies such as LCD
and LED.
 This prevents implementing sophisticated interactive
applications (using fast moving menus, scrolling etc)
 Imprint of images may be visible after refreshing the
screen and they are called Ghost images and the effect
is called Ghosting.

20. PERPETUAL PRINTING
 Printing has come a long way from daisy wheel
printers, dot matrix printers to inkjet and laser
printers and the world has moved on to perpetual
printers.
 Perpetual printing is an inkless, toner less printing
technology that allows the user to reuse paper.
 The main input to the printer is an electronic paper
which consists of a two coloured bead rotating
inside each cavity.
 When a printer applies voltage to the surface of the
sheet, the beads rotate to present one coloured
side to the viewer offering the ability to create text
or picture.
 These images will remain on the paper until it is fed
into the printer once again.

21. Contd…
 A Japanese company Sanwa Newtec is offering its
version of inkless printer called Prepeat.
 It uses a slightly different technique to produce
image.
 Each sheet of paper comes embedded with lueco
dyes which change colour according to
temperature (coloured when cool and clear when hot).
 The printer then heats and cools the paper to first
erase an image and then creates a new image in
its place.

22. What’s the catch?
 A single such printer costs almost
$6000 and a pack of 1000 sheets of
paper costs more than $3300 which is
very expensive.
 So an average PC user likely won’t
shell out that kind money to replace a
standard printer.

23. APPLICATIONS
Video newspaper
Electronic price tag
Wrist watch

24. Electronic paper keyboard and monitor Digital book
Smart card Mobile phone

25. The future of electronic-paper
• The next generation of e-paper will add colour
and include improved hardware that can refresh
pages more quickly and have more wireless
capabilities

26. CONCLUSION
The concept of electronic paper and
perpetual printing arose from
environmental reasons, since the
newspaper printed daily consume
large amount of paper which are then
discarded within 24hrs. Through this
invention it is estimated that we can
save 300 ton of paper per day which is
approximately equal to 5000 trees.

28. Thank You