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This sounds like Liquavista. It has been for a long time in the making, but it seems they didn't find yet a solution to industrialize it efficiently.

It's funny that the Liquavista website has a prominent headline on the front page declaring their acquisition by Samsung... dated January 2011. If they can't keep their public face on the web cleared of old cruft I would be concerned about the rest of the company's internals.

Samsung's competing Liquavista tech, based on 'electrowetting' is supposed to be coming out soon, it sounds pretty good too.

http://www.liquavista.com/technology/default.aspx

Indeed, behind the gorilla that is E-Ink (which seem the only ones to have successfully industrialized an e-paper technology so far), there are many innovative display technologies competiting. Another interesting technology that comes to my mind is Liquavista which uses electrowetting. And we shouldn't forget that iRex is also working on its own color e-paper technology for the next generation iLiads.

Why do slick web sites matter? I would rather see an informative web site.

Oh, I absolutely agree, and the Liquavista website is actually pretty informative (download the pdf there for even more details). For anyone actually interested in the tech, it's a much better site (the mirasol site seems much lighter on actual details, though maybe they've just hidden them well amongst all the flash animations).

Still, in some quarters, a clunky-looking site may hurt them a bit; marketing is still part of the tech business...

The Liquavista stuff looks more interesting though -- in particular, it doesn't need separate pixels for RGB.

(The Liquavista website is not nearly as slick as the mirasol site tho; it looks like the researchers also did the web design...)

This comment is well informed but has some important details wrong.
What Philips did sell to PVI is a business that uses E-Ink http://www.eink.com/ technology. E-Ink uses an electrophoretic technology, where tiny capsules contain both black and white particles with opposite electrical charge and fluid. Applying a voltage across the capsules makes them look black, white or grey from the users side. No coloured oil involved.
SiPix http://www.sipix.com/is similar, but uses only one kind of particle and a coloured liquid.

A spin-off from Philips, namely Liquavista http://www.liquavista.com/, developed the oil and water based displays and is currently marketing and mass producing this type of display. This technology is also known as electro-wetting. The principle is that an electric field is used to change the surface tension and thereby change the pixel electrode from hydrophilic (loves water and will be covered in water) to hydrophobic (doesn't like water and will be covered with the oil). The material not covering the pixel electrode is stored in a small reservoir at the side of each pixel.

What is new in the LG-Philips.LCD patent application, is not the oil and water idea, but the application and/or the exact implementation in a flexible display.