About E Ink Technology:

E Ink is a proprietary type of electronic paper, which was manufactured by E Ink Corp, founded in 1997 based on the research started at the MIT Media Lab. The technology was mostly used in devices like e-Readers but it can be also found to a lesser extent in mobile phones and watches.

Here are only a few examples where this technology can be found:

Tablets:
-Sony Reader
-iLiad
-Cybook Gen3
-Amazon Kindle
-Barnes & Noble nook

Mobile phones:
-Motorola Motophone (F3)
-Samsung Alias 2 (for the keys)

Watches:
-Phosphor Watches

In the October 2008 limited edition North American issue of Esquire magazine, we can see for the first time E Ink integrated, featuring flashing text; the cover was manufactured in Shanghai and was shipped refrigerated to the US for binding and was powered by a nominal 90-day integrated battery supply.

Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. Although revolutionary in concept, electronic ink is a straightforward fusion of chemistry, physics and electronics to create this new material. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule where they become visible to the user. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.



To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid "carrier medium" allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper. Ultimately electronic ink will permit most any surface to become a display, bringing information out of the confines of traditional devices and into the world around us



One of the disadvantages of this technology is that it has a very low refresh rate compared with the other low power display technologies on the market (ex. LCD). Because of this, it is nearly impossible to implement on screens like these sophisticated interactive applications like fast moving menus, mouse pointers or scrolling.

Another disadvantage may be that sometimes an imprint of an image may be visible after refreshing some parts of the screen. The created effect is also known as “ghosting”. This issue is solved, however, after the screen is refreshed several times.

Turning each pixel white, then black and then again white helps normalize the contrast of the pixels; this is why many devices with this E Ink technology flash the entire screen white and black when loading a new image, to make sure ghosting won’t happen.

Electronic ink can be applied to both flexible and rigid materials; when using flexible displays, the base requires a thin, flexible material, tough enough to withstand considerable wear, like extremely thin plastic. The process of electronic paper manufacturing promises to be less complicated and less costly than LCD.

The main advantages of electronic paper include low power usage (power will be used only information is changed on the screen), flexibility and readability which is better than most other displays. E Ink can be printed on any surface; here we could include walls, billboards, product labels or T-Shirts.
In the near future we could see electronic versions of the daily paper using E Ink technology.

(contains extras from Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)