Light Emitting Pictures On Standard Inkjet Printer

CrashRide writes: "This story on FOX states that UofA scientists have discovered a way to print light-emitting pictures on thin sheets of plastic using a standard inkjet printer. Fold up pocket monitors?" The article says that these scientists have produced "OLEDs of simple bands of light, a scorpion, the University of Arizona logo and even photographs of themselves."

Comments

Protection

[bonzoesc]

Jabbour said the next step of development is to find a way to protect the sheets from moisture, which damages them.

I can't wait until they discover lamination. Imagine what these could do for portable video games! Gone are the days of using a halogen head lamp like miners do just to play Game Boy.

Bookmakers, Etc?

[Ieshan]

It says "cheap".

Could industries like bookmakers or publishers use this sort of thing? I'm rather fond of the glowing text on the black background, if you ask me, and it would provide a great alternative to something like a reading light. of course, it'll probably jack the cost of books up. Even though they do claim it'll be "inexpensive".

However, I do think their assumption about 'computer monitors' is silly - right now, they're printing flat pictures, not moving, highly detailed ones.

Still not as cool as eInk

[decipher_saint]

I first saw this on a Sunday afternoon techie program, think about text flying around, blinking or being added dynamically via a wireless lan connection to a page and you've got the idea of it's coolness (even though its only monochrome).

The thing I like about eInk the most is that its fairly high-res (well, it looks sharp to me) and that it does not require back-lighting, it reads like paper under natural light.

http://www.eink.com/

Re:Power

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering the same thing after reading the fluffy story on Fox. Anyone got a link to a meatier story?

I think the solution is static electricity. For example, if the starter in your fluorescent lamp is blown, slide your fingertip along the bulb to light it. Since this paper uses 1/20th the power of fluorescent (instead of the impossible "20 times less..."), I think the necessary static charge would be extremely low. IANAEE, but I believe that when you charge the paper by handling it, the charge spreads evenly across the paper, lighting each pixel. Any EEs care to elaborate on this?

slow logic circuits

[nounderscores]

since this is using organic light emitting DIODES, does this mean that they can be wired back to back to create spray on transistors? Ultracheap custom chips... just gotta figure out how to solder onto paper.

This was done in June 2000 by Epson & CDT

[jgaynor]

This was done in June of 2000 by Epson-Sieko (yes the printer people) and CDT, a British company that researches OLEDs and similar crap.

Google brings up some resulst verifiying this but unfortunately the real copies are down - heres what google has cached.

The prototype colour display has been made using CDTâs red, green and blue polymer materials and an industry first ink-jet printing process developed for the project.

Re:747 bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of a gopher net my friends and I thought up. It was made up of hard drives carried by gophers around campus. Latency was terrible, and recieving a packet required rebooting (hot swappable was too expensive) but bandwidth could be killer.

Flexible EL products already available

[andzik]

This is a completely blatant plug, but it is on topic. There is an EL technology that allows for a paper-thin cold light source. The first one we have produced is a "Linux" lamp. I have video of one on our web site http://www.exoticlights.com The lamp not only glows but also is animated. We have a few prototype units for sale.

You already follow this model.

[systemaster]

I work in computer sales, so i should know. Cost of most home purchased printers $50-200. Cost of ink(~$40) over 5 years, replacing ink once a year, black + color, 80 * 5 = 400. So you pay like 2x for the ink vs the printer.