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iPAD, KINDLE, all tablets and slablets MADE OBSOLETE

Boffins produce disposable e-paper, made of actual paper

Brainboxes in Ohio say they have ended the tablet wars before they've even really begun.

No more will harassed consumers need to weigh up the benefits of e-ink versus LCD or LED vid-capable screens. No more will bank accounts be plundered by the need to purchase costly glass-based displays of either type.

Instead, no more than five years from now, moving images will be displayable on cheap throwaway sheets of paper in Harry Potter style.

"It is pretty exciting," says Andrew Steckl, electrical engineering prof at Cincinnati uni. "With the right paper, the right process and the right device fabrication technique, you can get results that are as good as you would get on glass, and our results are good enough for a video-style e-reader."

Steckl believes that future display devices could be rollable, feel like paper and deliver books, news and colour video in bright-light conditions.

"Nothing looks better than paper for reading," says the prof. "We hope to have something that would actually look like paper but behave like a computer monitor. We would have something that is very cheap, very fast, full-color and at the end of the day or the end of the week, you could pitch it into the trash."

Steckl and graduate student Duk Young Kim developed their results using an "electrowetting" display in which coloured droplets are manipulated using electrical fields. The matric or host material on which the display was mounted was ordinary paper, rather than rigid and expensive glass as seen in devices like the Kindle (e-ink) or iPad (touchscreen video display).

Steckly and Kim's research is published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, here (subscriber link). ®

Throw-away

I prefer the idea of tablets than throwaway, single-purpose displays. More electronic waste.

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0

Yet another

promise of a new display technology to replace everything we've seen before. I don't suppose we'll hear about this ever again either.

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1

"Real soon now" forever

This is one of those classic bits of tech (like flying cars and wristwatch phones) that are regularly announced as going to change the world in a few years.... yet never actually materialize.

Get back to me when it's actually really, really possible - not just a glimmer in a boffins eye.

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Anonymous Coward

No ZZZzzzz icon

This is another technology that's been consistently 5 years away for over 10 years.

The work mentioned, while interesting, does not change this that much: three widely separated blobs of water/ink on a roll do not make a hi-res display.

4
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Brilliant!

Adverts and stupid displays, all the shite we could do with less of!

So we finally start to make a difference in keeping poly-bags out of the landfills, now we have to deal with the ad-agencies pumping out tons of e-waste, electro-paper cack full of pointless drivel, all to make a few bucks!

Glad your so happy about bending the environment over, for one more rodgering!

3
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