Electronic paper matures: a revolution in motion?

Nearly 500 years after the invention of the printing revolution digital attacks the paper and ink. After several years of R & D conducted by companies such as E-ink American or European Toppan Philips, the market for electronic paper arrives at maturity.

Developed since 1997 in the laboratories of the prestigious MIT near Boston, this type of display is based on micro-capsules filled with black or white, whose presence in the visible part of the capsule is controlled by an electric pulse. Flexible and very thin, this type of low screen offers a resolution of 170 PPI enough to read text.

In recent months, Sony is marketing the Librie a reading terminal equipped with this type of display. Sold about $ 300, the first product offers sufficient resolution to read a book, but is unable to replace a screen LCD. Manufacturers Japanese and South Koreans are very interested in this technology and massive investment now in these new screens, with the triple objective of improving the resolution, the advent of color and lower prices.

Besides the material issues, the Japanese group is also investigating the problems in defining software standards for the creation of eBooks and especially interested in the strategic issue of DRM to prevent piracy. On this ground, the Japanese groups are nevertheless challenged by American publishers such as Microsoft or Adobe, which also seek to make “metro” or “pdf” format of future eBooks.

The electronic paper applications are numerous. In addition to the electronic book market, the eBook (books, dictionaries, textbooks), already quite popular in the United States or Japan, this type of technology is enormously press. In partnership with Hitachi, the powerful newspaper Nikkei expects to divide by 10 its costs of printing and distribution of paper and will soon launch an electronic version on paper of his newspaper in Japan.

But the electronic paper may revolutionize the packaging industry, with intelligent packaging, or the display on the street, allowing viewers not to handle or paper glue.

With a manufacturing cost of a few dozen euros per sheet, which can be reduced to fifteen euros in case of mass production, less energy and flexible, electronic paper will complement or LCD screens OLED, and would upset the entire “paper” whose impact on the environment has always been highly critical of environmentalists. Remains whether the world of the french edition, often quite conservative, take this new technology to lower the price of the book and democratize access to culture.

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