EPSON AND THE E-PAPER BANDWAGON

http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=207801665
E-paper bandwagon gathering steam
LOS
ANGELES — Epson emerged at the Society for Information Display
conference this week as the latest in a string of E Ink Corp. licensees
bringing e-paper products to market.The company demonstrated several
active-matrix electrophoretic displays (EPD), based on low-temperature
polysilicon (LTPS) thin-film transistors, with unusually high
resolution. Creating a high-res image that looks like ink on paper was
motivated by the company’s traditional involvement with real paper in
the printer business, a company spokesman said.

Epson
demonstrated a 6.7-inch-diagonal display with a 1,200 x 1,600-pixel
format, yielding a resolution of approximately 300 pixels/inch; and a
13.4-inch-diagonal display in a 3,104 x 4,128-pixel format with 385
pixel/inch resolution.The company has e-book reader applications in
mind, and it is also exploring other e-paper applications that would be
“thinner and lighter than e-books.” The combination of E Ink’s EPD
technology and Epson’s LTPS technology, the spokesman said, enables the
fabrication of displays that are “as big as one might want them to be.”
Commercialization is expected “soon.”As for E Ink itself, that company
demonstrated its latest design win at its SID booth: a Hitachi
cellphone with a display “skin” that lets users personalize their
phones. The phone offers a choice of 95 different patterns on its front
face, including a butterfly that moves across the screen and grows when
the phone rings.Kent Displays Inc. demonstrated a concept cellphone at
SID that uses this company’s cholesteric-LCD e-paper technology to
personalize a phone. In this case, a stack of red, green and blue
subdisplays gives the user a choice of front face colors: eight colors
in the demo but a bigger pallet is also possible, according to a
company spokesman.