Display technologies: A multilayered solution

Aug 24th 2011, 9:56 by The Economist online

E-READERS, such as Amazon’s Kindle, have been a commercial success. They have not, however, revolutionised the publishing industry in quite the way that many predicted they would. In part, that is because their displays are black and white, and they seem to many readers to be slow, grainy and—if truth be told—a little archaic. Better screens might make the difference between e-readers being intriguing gadgets and killer apps, and Shin-Hyun Kim and David Weitz, who work at the Experimental Soft Condensed Matter group at Harvard University, think they may have found a way to build those better screens.
Unlike conventional display screens, which are lit from behind, e-readers use reflected light in a way similar to paper. Letters and other characters on the screen are formed out of ink that has a high optical contrast with the background, making them easy to read. The difference is that, rather than being printed into permanent shapes like normal ink, electronic ink is held in small capsules that can reveal it or hide it as required.
The result is legible even in bright sunlight.

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