E-paper on the drawing board

Bell Labs invents 'microcontact printing'

In a few years' time an entire issue of What PC? could be delivered on just one page, if a recent innovation from Bell Labs bears fruit.

The research division of Lucent Technology has come up with a new manufacturing technique known as 'microcontact printing'. In essence, this allows low-cost rubber stamp-like production of flexible computer displays, dubbed 'electronic paper'.

A sheet of e-paper measures less than a millimetre thick but resolution is currently limited to just a few hundred pixels. Working research samples have been demonstrated with changing displays of graphic images. While the images are recognisable, the poor resolution means the output is blocky.

Even so, Bell Labs is sure that the technology can be developed into saleable products within just a few years.

The scientists' aim is to reduce the size of e-paper pixels to dimensions of just 200 microns; little bigger than those of today's flat-panel liquid crystal displays.

This is an apparently simple process, reliant only on the creation of larger scale manufacturing facilities to move the development out of the research lab.

Reporting their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the boffins reckon that, with built-in batteries and memory, one sheet of e-paper could contain hundreds of pages of information.