The Beginnning of E-Ink Technology

Can you imagine a newspaper that with the touch of a finger can change from yesterday’s headlines to todays? The implications for this technology is astounding and two organizations have already jumped on the bandwagon, Xerox and E ink to distribute this emerging technology to other organizations. E-ink works by having millions of tiny little “micro-holes” in the paper (about 100,000 per square inch of paper), these holes are then filled with a liquid ink like substance. Finally floating in the “micro holes” are tiny negatively charge balls. This electronic ink can the be used on any paper that regular ink can be used on but for now it is applied to a thin plastic making e-paper. The E-ink covers the paper creating tiny cells like pixels on a television. In the e-paper there is implanted microelectronics that deliver a charge to the cells turning them from positive to negative and vies versa, by doing this the cells create an image or text. This is an image of how the electronic ink works. By seeing how the e-paper works we can see how paper is reusable and how it is surprisingly durable since it is just a thin sheet a plastic.
There are many advantages to E-ink technology, one of the most important one to organizations is the cost. Currently according to a recent US department of commerce study 5% to 15% of companies’ expenditures outside of labour is devoted to paper and printing related supplies. E-ink can cut this number in half. At the moment corporations like Motorola are backing e-Ink in the hope that it can replace electronic display screens because it is so much cheaper to produce then regular screens. E-ink would also create displays with a low power input, reducing the cost to consumers and organizations. An aspect of e-ink that is particularly exciting for the world we live into today is its durability. Instead of the average American office worker produces over 2lbs of paper waste a year, things could be printed with e-ink greatly reducing our waste and helping the environment. Environmental consciousness is an ever growing part of an organizations public profile and this technology can bring them closer to meeting there goals. An industry that is particularly excited about thins emerging technology is the publishing industry. Their plans for this technology is to create e-books where you can read a book through a display that only uses power to turn the page instead of old technology where power was expended by just having the screen on. This would revolutionize publishing by reducing their costs and maybe exposing them to a new market. At the moment many companies like Sony have created e-book readers using e-ink technology and are selling them online. Another advantage of this technology is that it is easy on the eyes because it isn’t lit up like LCD screens. As well it can store a lot of data on a single sheet of paper, making it more efficient for organizations because of handing out huge packets of papers to its employees and investors it would just hand a single sheet.
Disadvantage of this technology are that in its current state the refresh between pages is slow and because of that it may not adhere itself to consumers. As well if an organizations needs to be able to flip through data quickly this technology might not be the best for them. Also like all new technology organizations might not see the benefits for themselves and will be resistant to change from regular paper to e-ink paper. This e-ink would also not be good for every situation, for instance if you only need to print out one page report it would be a waste to use the e-paper since it is extremely more expensive per sheet in comparison to regular paper.

References:

Things to Know About Paper Consumption. (2003). MDF Systems Inc. Retrieved on September 29th 2007 from http://www.mdfsystems.com/artman/publish/article_42.shtml

How Electronic Ink Will Work. (2007). How Stuff Works. Retrieved on September 29th 2007 from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/e-ink.htm

E-Ink: Your Hands Will Thank You. (2001). Wired Online Magazine. Retrieved on September 29th 2007 from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/e-ink.htm
Phony Reader. (2006). If:book A project of The Institute for The Future of the Book. Retrieved on September 29th 2007 from http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/eink/