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Reusable e-paper rolled out
Held without charge
Green-tastic boffs have created rewritable e-paper with a 300dpi resolution that needs no power to be viewed.
A team of Taiwanese scientists have developed "i2R e-paper", which apparently needs no backlighting and thus uses no electricity.
According to Frank Hsiu, a senior official at the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Hsinchu City, the 'tree-saving paper' only requires heat to "store or transmit images onto the flexible display." It can then be erased with a thermal writing device similar to that used in fax machines. Urm... with electricity, no?
As it stands, i2R e-paper can be used up to 260 times.
The Institute has recently passed the tech over to a Taiwanese company and reckons the product could hit markets in a couple of years, where it has potential to be implemented in e-books and electronic billboards.
Meanwhile, I've avidly encouraged reusable e-paper since I was a six year old. It might take half an hour to write what you want to, but nothing beats an Etch-a-Sketch. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
