Future Paper

Slashdot has a link to this Story from Newscientist. Some inventive folks in the UK have invented a video screen that runs on LEPs. This means they can make cheap, bright, easy to read, small, and paper thin video displays. Sort of like a paper replacement. In theory you could print a LEP screen from your printer.

\”But perhaps the most tantalising development on the horizon for LEP technology, says Burroughes, is the possibility of creating video displays for, say, wireless Internet access, that can be rolled up. CDT is working on this research with the DuPont chemical company, which has itself acquired another light-emitting polymer research company called Uniax. \”In London last week, a team from Cambridge Display Technology and Seiko Epson of Nagano demonstrated the world\’s first full-colour video screen to use arrays of red, green and blue light-emitting polymers (LEPs). Unlike complex liquid crystal displays, LEPs have a wide viewing angle. And because they need no backlights, colour filters or polarisers, they are far simpler to make, says CDT\’s technical director Jeremy Burroughes, a member of the team that developed LEPs at the University of Cambridge in 1989.

The companies expect the ink-jet printed video display to begin appearing in Seiko\’s mobile phones in two years\’ time, at prices \”significantly less\” than rival models with colour LCDs.

But perhaps the most tantalising development on the horizon for LEP technology, says Burroughes, is the possibility of creating video displays for, say, wireless Internet access, that can be rolled up. CDT is working on this research with the DuPont chemical company, which has itself acquired another light-emitting polymer research company called Uniax.