Swedish research team creates a new color electronic paper display

Core tip: Although there are a few products on the market that use color electronic ink screens, their color performance is much weaker than LCD or OLED panels. However, a new type of color electronic paper display that has been exposed recently can not only bring LCD-style display quality, but also does not require power-consuming backlight components. For tablets, e-book readers, and mobile phones with special needs, it is expected to give birth to electronic devices with more significant battery life.

Although there are a few products on the market that use color electronic ink screens, their color performance is much weaker than LCD or OLED panels. However, a new color electronic paper display that has been exposed recently can not only bring LCD-style display quality, but also does not require power-consuming backlight components. For tablets, e-book readers, and mobile phones with special needs, it is expected to give birth to electronic devices with more significant battery life.

It is reported that the biggest advantage of the electronic paper display is that it can easily reach a battery life of several weeks or even longer. In contrast, ordinary mobile devices can only last for hours or days of standby/use time.

In fact, Qualcomm has devoted many years of effort to the developers of Mirasol panels. In order to reduce the dependence on components that require the most power consumption, the new color electronic paper panel can use ambient light to reflect and illuminate the screen.

Although the Kaleido color electronic paper screen technology based on electronic ink (E Ink) has been developed for several generations, it has not yet been able to subvert the traditional display market, but is only more popular on some relatively niche e-readers (such as PocketBook). InkPad Color).

A major factor affecting its popularity is that the color expressiveness of electronic paper displays is much weaker. The good news is that the research team at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden announced that it has developed a new type of electronic paper.

Even if you still need to rely on ambient light to light up the screen, its color should be more accurate. Specifically, the new electronic paper panel uses porous nanostructured materials, supplemented by a combination of tungsten trioxide, gold, and platinum.

Previously, the color tone of the pixel was not so vivid, but after flipping the display design, the nanostructure has been located on the top and the conductive layer underneath makes the color closer to the human eye. The researchers explained that the new design means that users can look directly at the pixels on the surface, so they can see various colors more clearly.

During the demonstration, the research team compared the new color electronic paper display with the PocketBook Color using Kaleido electronic ink display. It turns out that the newly developed screen is not only brighter, but the colors are also displayed more purely.

Unfortunately, this new technology still faces some challenges, especially the high cost of raw materials (gold and platinum are not cheap). Looking to the future, the research team will work to further reduce the use of precious metals.