CHAPTER-1 INTRODUCTION

Presenting information, data and images is an important aspect in our information society. Currently, the forms of displays we use include computer screens, television screens and of course the most popular display medium, the printed page on paper. The display technologies which are the norm for digital media are liquid crystal displays (LCDs), cathode ray tube displays, organic light emitting diode displays and plasma screens. While these digital display media are good for streaming video and visual text data, people still prefer to print articles on paper rather than reading on a computer screen. The reason behind this are the properties associated with paper which make it the best medium for reading information such as high reflectivity and contrast, flexibility, light weight and ease of portability, low cost and wide viewing angles. In contrast, computer screens suffer from disadvantages such as low reflectivity, high emissivity, high cost, high power consumption and bulkiness. Also, the screens are hard on the eyes and prolonged use is difficult. Therefore, many recent efforts are concentrated on achieving an electronic display screen which combines the desired optical properties of paper with the dynamic capability of conventional digital screens. This is referred to in the popular literature as electronic paper even though it is not paper in the true sense.

1.1 E-PAPER OVERVIEW

Electronic paper, also called e-paper or electronic ink display is a display technology designed to mimic the appearance of ordinary ink on paper. Unlike a conventional flat panel display, which uses a backlight to illuminate its pixels, electronic paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely without drawing electricity, while allowing the image to be changed later. To build e-paper, several different technologies exist, some using plastic substrate and electronics so that the display is flexible. E-paper is considered more comfortable to read than conventional displays. This is due to the stable image, which does not need to be refreshed constantly, the wider viewing angle, and the fact that it reflects ambient light rather than emitting its own light. An e-paper display can be read in direct sunlight without the image fading. Lightweight and durable, e-paper can currently provide only a monochrome display (i.e. black on
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white). The contrast ratio in available displays as of 2008 might be described as similar to that of newspaper, though newly-developed implementations are slightly better.There is ongoing competition among manufacturers to provide full-color capability. Applications include electronic pricing labels in retail shops, and general signage,time tables at bus stations, electronic billboards, the mobile phone Motorola FONE F3, and e-book readers capable of displaying digital versions of books and e-paper magazines.

1.2 HISTORY
Nicholas K. Sheridon is known as father of e-paper. He realized the need for e-paper in 1989. At Xerox PARC, people had long predicted the advent of the paperless office, with the widespread adoption of the personal computer they pioneered. The paperless office never happened. Instead, the personal computer caused more paper to be consumed. He realized that most of the paper consumption was caused by a difference in comfort level between reading documents on paper and reading them on the CRT screen. Any document over a half page in length was likely to be printed, subsequently read, and discarded within a day. There was a need for a paper-like electronic display - e-paper. It needed to have as many paper properties as possible, because ink on paper is the perfect display. Subsequently, he realized that the Gyricon display, which he had invented in the early 70s, was a good candidate for use as e-paper. He set about developing a manufacturing process for the Gyricon and solving its early problems. At this time, he was working alone, with a very good technician. There was a eureka moment when the need for epaper crystallized in his mind and he realized or thought he did the magnitude of the challenge.

CHAPTER-2 TECHNOLOGY
2.1 GYRICON
Electronic paper was first developed in the 1970s by Nick Sheridon at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. The first electronic paper, called Gyricon, consisted of polyethylene spheres between 75 and 106 micrometres across. Each sphere is a janus particle composed of negatively charged black plastic on one side and positively charged white plastic on the other (each bead is thus a dipole). The spheres are embedded in a transparent silicone sheet, with each sphere suspended in a bubble of oil so that they can rotate freely. The polarity of the voltage applied to each pair of electrodes then determines whether the white or black side is face-up, thus giving the pixel a white or black appearance. At the FPD 2008 exhibition, Japanese company Soken has demonstrated a wall with electronic wall-paper using this technology.

2.2 ELECTROPHORETIC
An electrophoretic display is an information display that forms visible images by rearranging charged pigment particles using an applied electric field. In the simplest implementation of an electrophoretic display, titanium dioxide particles approximately one micrometre in diameter are dispersed in a hydrocarbon oil. A dark-colored dye is also added to the oil, along with surfactants and charging agents that cause the particles to take on an electric charge. This mixture is placed between two parallel, conductive plates separated by a gap of 10 to 100 micrometres. When a voltage is applied across the two plates, the particles will migrate electrophoretically to the plate bearing the opposite charge from that on the particles. When the particles are located at the front (viewing) side of the display, it appears white, because light is scattered back to the viewer by the high-index titania particles. When the particles are located at the rear side of the display, it appears dark, because the incident light is absorbed by the colored dye. If the rear electrode is divided into a number of small picture elements (pixels), then an image can be formed by applying the appropriate voltage to each region of the display to create a pattern of reflecting and absorbing regions.

Figure 2.1: Scheme of an Electrophoretic Display

Figure 2.2: Scheme of an Electrophoretic Display Using Filters

Electrophoretic displays are considered prime examples of the electronic paper category, because of their paper-like appearance and low power consumption. Examples of commercial electrophoretic displays include the high-resolution active matrix displays used in the Amazon Kindle, Sony Librie, Sony Reader, and iRex iLiad e-readers. These displays are constructed from an electrophoretic imaging film manufactured by E Ink Corporation. The Motorola MOTOFONE F3 was the first mobile phone to use the technology, in an effort to help eliminate glare from direct sunlight during outdoor use.[8] Electrophoretic displays can be manufactured using the Electronics on Plastic by Laser Release (EPLaR) process developed by Philips Research to enable existing AM-LCD manufacturing plants to create flexible plastic displays. In the 1990s another type of electronic paper was invented by Joseph Jacobson, who later co-founded the E Ink Corporation which formed a partnership with Philips Components two years later to develop and market the technology. In 2005, Philips sold the electronic paper business as well as its related patents to Prime View International. This used tiny microcapsules filled with electrically charged white particles suspended in a colored oil.[9] In early versions, the underlying circuitry controlled whether the white particles were at the top of the capsule (so it looked white to the viewer) or at the bottom of the capsule (so the viewer saw the color of the
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oil). This was essentially a reintroduction of the well-known electrophoretic display technology, but the use of microcapsules allowed the display to be used on flexible plastic sheets instead of glass. One early version of electronic paper consists of a sheet of very small transparent capsules, each about 40 micrometres across. Each capsule contains an oily solution containing black dye (the electronic ink), with numerous white titanium dioxide particles suspended within. The particles are slightly negatively charged, and each one is naturally white. The microcapsules are held in a layer of liquid polymer, sandwiched between two arrays of electrodes, the upper of which is made transparent. The two arrays are aligned so that the sheet is divided into pixels, which each pixel corresponding to a pair of electrodes situated either side of the sheet. The sheet is laminated with transparent plastic for protection, resulting in an overall thickness of 80 micrometres, or twice that of ordinary paper.

Figure 2.3: Appearance of pixels The network of electrodes is connected to display circuitry, which turns the electronic ink 'on' and 'off' at specific pixels by applying a voltage to specific pairs of electrodes. Applying a negative charge to the surface electrode repels the particles to the bottom of local capsules, forcing the black dye to the surface and giving the pixel a black appearance. Reversing the voltage has the opposite effect - the particles are forced from the surface, giving the pixel a white appearance. A more recent incarnation of this concept requires only one layer of electrodes beneath the microcapsules.

2.3 ELECTROWETTING
The technology is based on controlling the shape of a confined water/oil interface by an applied voltage. With no voltage applied, the (coloured) oil forms a flat film between the water and a hydrophobic (water-repellent), insulating coating of an electrode, resulting in a coloured pixel. When a voltage is applied between the electrode and the water, the interfacial tension between the water and the coating changes. As a result the stacked state is no longer stable, causing the water to move the oil aside. This results in a partly transparent pixel, or, in case a reflective white surface is used under the switchable element, a white pixel. Because of the small size of the pixel, the user only experiences the average reflection, which means that a high-brightness, high-contrast switchable element is obtained, which forms the basis of the reflective display. Displays based on electro-wetting have several attractive features. The switching between white and coloured reflection is fast enough to display video content. Furthermore, it is a low-power and low-voltage technology, and displays based on the effect can be made flat and thin. The reflectivity and contrast are better or equal to those of other reflective display types and are approaching those of paper. In addition, the technology offers a unique path toward high-brightness full-colour displays, leading to displays that are four times brighter than reflective LCDs and twice as bright as other emerging technologies. Instead of using red, green and blue (RGB) filters or alternating segments of the three primary colours, which effectively result in only one third of the display reflecting light in the desired colour, electro-wetting allows for a system in which one sub-pixel is able to switch two different colours independently. This results in the availability of two thirds of the display area to reflect light in any desired colour. This is achieved by building up a pixel with a stack of two independently controllable coloured oil films plus a colour filter. The colours used are cyan, magenta and yellow, which is a so-called subtractive system, comparable to the principle used in inkjet printing for example. Compared to LCD another factor two in brightness is gained because no polarisers are required.

2.4 ELECTROFLUIDIC
Electrofluidic displays are a variation of an electrowetting display. Electrofluidic displays place an aqueous pigment dispersion inside a tiny reservoir. The reservoir comprises <5-10% of the viewable pixel area and therefore the pigment is substantially hidden from view. Voltage is used to electromechanically pull the pigment out of the reservoir and spread it as a film directly behind the viewing substrate. As a result, the display takes on color and brightness similar to that of conventional pigments printed on paper. When voltage is removed liquid surface tension causes the pigment dispersion to rapidly recoil into the reservoir. As reported in the May 2009 Issue of Nature Photonics, the technology can potentially provide >85% white state reflectance for electronic paper. The core technology was invented at the Novel Devices Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati. The technology is currently being commercialized by Gamma Dynamics.

2.5 OTHER TECHNOLOGIES

Electronic paper has also been produced using technologies such as cholesteric LCD (Ch-LC). Other research efforts into e-paper have involved using organic transistors embedded into flexible substrates, including attempts to build them into conventional paper. Simple color epaper consists of a thin colored optical filter added to the monochrome technology described above. The array of pixels is divided into triads, typically consisting of the standard cyan, magenta and yellow, in the same way as CRT monitors (although using subtractive primary colors as opposed to additive primary colors). The display is then controlled like any other electronic color display.

CHAPTER-3 WORKING OF E-PAPER

3.1 HOW IT WORKS?
E-paper comprises two different parts: the first is electronic ink, sometimes referred to as the "frontplane"; and the second is the electronics required to generate the pattern of text and images on the e-ink page, called the "backplane". Over the years, a number of methods for creating e-ink have been developed. The Gyricon e-ink developed in the 70s by Nick Sheridon at Xerox is based on a thin sheet of flexible plastic containing a layer of tiny plastic beads, each encapsulated in a little pocket of oil and thus able to freely rotate within the plastic sheet. Each hemisphere of a bead has a different color and a different electrical charge. When an electric field is applied by the backplane, the beads rotate, creating a two-colored pattern. This method of creating e-ink was dubbed bichromal frontplane. Originally, bichromal frontplane had a number of limitations, including relatively low brightness and resolution and a lack of color. Although these issues are still being tackled, other forms of eink, with improved properties compared to the original Gyricon, have been developed over the years. One such technology is electrophoretic frontplane, developed by the E Ink Corporation. Electrophoretic frontplane consists of millions of tiny microcapsules, each approximately 100 microns in diameterabout as wide as a human hair. Each microcapsule is filled with a clear fluid containing positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule, causing the area to appear to the viewer as a white dot, while the black particles move to the bottom of the capsule and are thus hidden from view. When a positive electric field is applied, the black particles migrate to the top and the white particles move to the bottom, generating black text or a picture. The brightness and resolution of electrophoretic-based e-ink is better than that of bichromal-based e-ink, but both are monochromatic in nature. To create color, E Ink joined hands with the Japanese company Toppan Printing, which produces color filters. Another drawback of electrophoretic e-ink is its low refresh rate, making electrophoretic e-ink unsuitable
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for displaying animation or video. Since it takes time for the particles to move from one side of the microcapsule to the other, drawing a new text or image is too slow and creates a flicker effect.

Figure 3.1:A Colourful Illustration of The Way ChLCD Technology Works

A completely different solution for creating e-paper, known as cholesteric liquid crystal (ChLCD), is being developed by such companies as IBM and Philips, as well as HP and Fujitsu, which have demonstrated actual devices. ChLCD technology is based on the well-known and widespread technology of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), which work by applying a current to spiral-shaped liquid-crystal molecules that can change from a vertical to a horizontal position. Although other potential technologies for developing advanced color electronic paper exist such as photonic crystals (P-ink) recently covered by TFOT, many analysts believe that ChLCD technology could become the dominant e-paper technology of the next decade. This assessment relates to the high level of maturity exemplified by the current LCD industry, as well as to the
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fact that ChLCD technology currently offers what many analysts see as the ideal list of features for e-paper: flexibility and even bendability; thinness, at approximately 0.8 millimeters; lightness; a bi-stable nature, requiring no power to maintain an image and very little power to change it; good brightness, contrast, and resolution; as well as vivid color and a decent refresh rate capable of displaying animation and possibly even video.

3.1 ELECTRONIC PAPER DISPLAY

An Electronic Paper Display is a display that possess a paper-like high contrast appearance, ultra-low power consumption, and a thin, light form. It gives the viewer the experience of reading from paper, while having the power of updatable information. EPDs are a technology enabled by electronic ink - ink that carries a charge enabling it to be updated through electronics. Electronic ink is ideally suited for EPDs as it is a reflective technology which requires no front or backlight, is viewable under a wide range of lighting conditions, including direct sunlight, and requires no power to maintain an image. E Ink Corporation is the leading developer of electronic ink and of EPD technologies. E Ink manufactures an electronic ink which is made into a film used as an optical component to make EPDs. EPDs are ideal for many consumer and industrial applications where the reading experience and range of lighting and viewing angles are of the utmost importance. Transportation signage can be utilized in a myriad of locations previously impossible due to sunlight or viewing angle. eBooks that strained the eye with their emissive light can now give the reader the true book-like experience. Cell phone screens that had to be shaded and turned continuously for a glimpse of the numbers now have high contrast and brightness in the widest of lighting conditions. EPDs give power to product designers to use their imagination in ways never before possible. The first commercial product using an EPD is the SONY LIBRI. Various watch and clock companies have developed new product concepts with EPDs.

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CHAPTER-4 OPPURTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES

4.1 APPLICATIONS
Several companies are simultaneously developing electronic paper and ink. While the technologies used by each company provide many of the same features, each has its own distinct technological advantages. All electronic paper technologies face the following general challenges:

A method for encapsulation An ink or active material to fill the encapsulation Electronics to activate the ink

Electronic ink can be applied to both flexible and rigid materials. In the case of flexible displays, the base requires a thin, flexible material tough enough to withstand considerable wear, such as extremely thin plastic. The method of how the inks are encapsulated and then applied to the substrate is what distinguishes each company from each other. These processes are complex and are carefully guarded industry secrets. The manufacture of electronic paper promises to be less complicated and less costly than traditional LCD manufacture. There are many approaches to electronic paper, with many companies developing technology in this area. Other technologies being applied to electronic paper include modifications of liquid crystal displays, electrochromic displays, and the electronic equivalent of an Etch A Sketch at Kyushu University. Advantages of electronic paper includes low power usage (power is only drawn when the display is updated), flexibility and better readability than most displays. Electronic ink can be printed on any surface, including walls, billboards, product labels and T-shirts. The ink's flexibility would also make it possible to develop rollable displays for electronic devices. The ideal electronic paper product is a digital book that can typeset itself and could be read as if it were made of regular paper, yet programmed to download and display the text from any book. Another possible use is in the distribution of an electronic version of a daily paper.

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4.1.1 Commercial applications (a) Education: digital schoolbooks In January 2007, the Dutch specialist in e-Paper edupaper.nl started a pilot project in a secondary school in Maastricht, using e-Paper as digital schoolbooks to reduce costs and students' daily burden of books. (b) Wristwatches In December 2005 Seiko released their Spectrum SVRD001 wristwatch, which has a flexible electrophoretic display. (c) E-Books

In September 2006 Sony released the PRS-500 Sony Reader e-book reader. On October 2, 2007, Sony announced the PRS-505, an updated version of the Reader. In November 2008, Sony released the PRS-700BC which incorporated a backlight and a touchscreen.

In November 2006, the iRex iLiad was ready for the consumer market. Consumers could initially read e-Books in PDF and HTML formats, and in July 2007 support for the popular Mobipocket PRC format was added, but price was still a problem. With the introduction of the competing Cybook, prices have decreased almost 50%.

In late 2007, Amazon began producing and marketing the Amazon Kindle, an e-book with an e-paper display. In February 2009, Amazon released the Kindle 2 and in May 2009 the larger Kindle DX was announced.

(d) Newspapers

In February 2006, the Flemish daily De Tijd distributed an electronic version of the paper to select subscribers in a limited marketing study, using a pre-release version of the iRex iLiad. This was the first recorded application of electronic ink to newspaper publishing.

In September 2007, the French daily Les chos announced the official launch of an electronic version of the paper on a subscription basis. Two offers are available, combining a one year subscription and a reading device. One interesting point of the offer is the choice of a light (176g) reading device (adapted for Les Echos by Ganaxa) or the iRex iLiad. Two different processing platforms are used to deliver readable information

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of the daily, one based on the newly developed GPP electronic ink platform from Ganaxa, and the other one developed internally by Les Echos.

Since January 2008, the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad is distributed for the iRex iLiad reader.

(e) Digital Photo Frame In the future as electronic paper displays improve and full high quality color is possible, the technology may become incorporated in digital photo frame products. Existing digital photo frames require a constant power supply and have a limited viewing angle and physical thickness that is inferior to a conventional photograph. A digital photo frame using e-paper technology would address all of these shortcomings. A well-designed digital photo frame using an electronic ink display could, in theory, run for months or years from batteries, because such a device would require electricity only to briefly boot up to connect to a USB memory stick (or other storage device) and change the display before powering off all components. (f) Displays embedded in smart cards Flexible display cards enable financial payment cardholders to generate a one-time password to reduce online banking and transaction fraud. Electronic paper could offer a flat and thin alternative to existing key fob tokens for data security. The worlds first ISO compliant smart card with an embedded display was developed by Smartdisplayer using SiPix Imagings electronic paper. (g) Cell phones

Motorola's low-cost mobile phone, the Motorola F3, also uses an alphanumeric black/white electrophoretic display.

The Samsung Alias 2 mobile phone incorporates electronic ink from E Ink into the keypad, which allows the keypad to change character sets and orientation while in different display modes.

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4.2 CHALLENGES
Electronic paper technologies have a very low refresh rate comparing with LCD technologies. This prevents producers from implementing sophisticated interactive applications (using fast moving menus, mouse pointers or scrolling) like those which are possible on handheld computers. An example of this limitation is that a document cannot be smoothly zoomed without either extreme blurring during the transition or a very slow zoom. The main obstacle is price. Our research shows that the cost of an e-paper-based reader has to fall to under $100 before a significant percentage of the population will buy one. Even then, they will only buy if suitable content is available at a reasonable cost. The second obstacle is availability of content. E-paper has entered the market, but not yet in a big way. Gyricon sold message signs, and E Ink Corporation provided the e-paper for the Sony Reader sold in Japan. Kent Displays is also selling signs. No technology is yet sufficiently paper-like to grab the huge latent market widely recognized to be there. More invention is needed. This is a lot like the early days of television development, when everyone knew what was needed but getting the technology right was tough. No technology is sufficiently paper-like, yet. By this, I mean a display medium that is thin, flexible, capable of storing readable images without power consumption, highly readable in ambient light, and has good resolution, high whiteness, and good contrast and is pretty cheap. A big part of this equation is the addressing electronics. Organic thin film transistors, or TFTs, will provide flexible addressing at a low cost, and other technologies show promise, but none of these are quite ready.

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CHAPTER-5 CONCLUSION
5.1 FUTURE SCOPE
E-paper is a display medium intended to mimic the appearance or ordinary ink on paper while being rewritable. Despite disadvantages of poor colour and refresh rate characteristics, e-paper will have significant benefits over other display media and will positively impact the traditional paper market, the retail display sector, a number of consumer markets and the office environment in years to come. E-paper does have has some barriers to overcome before gaining credibility with the mainstream market. However, it is generating a great deal of interest and its adoption is expected to increase steadily over the next few years as the technology improves. One of the key drivers for e-paper adoption is the way it is continuously evolving to include new technologies. Recent additions include touchscreen, wireless connection and rewritable colour support capability into devices using e-paper. Multiple e-book readers have also been introduced and applications of the technology are now expanding beyond e-book readers to include device displays for phones, clocks and watches. E-paper also has the advantage of providing a similar user experience to real paper display. Its thinness gives users the benefits of a portable, paper-thin rewritable display while its readability in bright sunlight gives a similar user experience to that of reading a paper display. Low power consumption is the main driver for e-paper adoption in most cases and this is enabling initial applications in signage (for retail and roadside applications), static displays (ebooks) and small information-centric screens. Low power consumption also boosts e-papers green credentials. Its potential environmental benefits are significant, resulting in the saving of trees, preventing the generation of waste water and reducing the emissions of green house gases. Despite these benefits, there are a number of disadvantages to e-paper that must be overcome in order for it to gain more widespread adoption. Overall, e-paper content is limited and the current colour capabilities of e-paper displays are poor. E-paper is also typically weak in its handling of moving images and a compromise must be found between the requirements for full-motion video and low power consumption.
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The cost of e-paper displays will need to fall further if it is to act as a viable mainstream alternative to print media, especially as the falling costs and increasing quality of alternative technologies such as OLED and LCD could moderate the growth potential of e-paper.

5.2 CONCLUSION
Neither the Lucent/E Ink version nor the Gyricon version require a constant power source; the initial charge creates the display, which then remains fixed until another charge is applied to change it. Low power demand is an important consideration for a technology that is intended to at least partially - supplant a power-independent, standalone application like paper. The challenge involved in creating viable e-paper is to develop a material that has the desirable characteristics of traditional paper in addition to its own intrinsic benefits (such as being automatically refreshable). Like traditional paper, e-paper must be lightweight, flexible, glarefree, and affordable, if it is to gain consumer approval. Developers of both the competing epapers claim to have accomplished most of these qualities in their products. The first e-paper products will be Gyricon-based: portable, reusable pricing signs for stores that can be changed instantly through a computer link; the first Gyricon-based electronic newspaper is expected to be available within the next 3 years.

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CHAPTER-6 REFERENCES

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