LCD Screens Almost Paper-thin

DarklordSatin writes "Nature.com has an article up about new LCDs that are thin enough to roll up and can display black and white at 96 dpi. More coverage by Wired and Scientific American. Thanks go to Arstechnica for the heads up." Wow. Let the speculation for new uses begin! Update: 05/10 14:59 GMT by CN : Whoops, this is really a dupe of an older story that slipped through because I only searched for LCDs. Ah well, it's still cool.

Comments

yeah coool

[lexcyber]

What is the primary appliance for this device?

Re:yeah coool

[kingkade]

Anywhere you would need a thin screen. e-newspapers, bathroom walls, clothes that have a display pattern, easy to move signs/signals, etc. Read the article for petes sake, lex!

Re:yeah coool

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a wireless pocket sized computer, something like that that Personal Server Intel touted a while back. You could use a thin-film flexible circuit and transceiver to "talk" to it. Super-thin touchscreens won't be too far off either. Then you can add wireless broadband 'net access to the Personal Server, and you've effective got the world in your pocket.

How many electric trees

[Anonymous Coward]

Are going to be destroyed every day for newspapers?

Save the Electronic Rainforest!

Cool

[Hadur]

Not a flame here, but I would rther see the price of LCD screens go down than their size.

Re:Cool

[Chicane-UK]

Agreed..

I work in a job as a Computer Technician, and people keep saying to me they really want to get an LCD screen 'because it looks cool' - fair enough I suppose, but why pay for a 17" mid range LCD screen over a 21" Natural Flat top of the line CRT monitor? Ok, it saves on some desk space..

Its a no brainer for me.. i'd still put my money on CRT every time.

Re:Cool

[Squareball]

Well with advancments like this, the price will go down. One day LCDs will be paper thin high resolution color that are like $20.

As to uses.. well thank god that I won't have to have all the pr0n mags laying around any more! ;) Soon we'll just subscribe and it'll be accessed on our paper thin LCDs! w00t ;)

Re:Cool

[obsidian head]

LCDs allow your working space be more changable. This is the same reasoning behind Apple making desktop computers easier to carry; you don't want to be chained to the same desk. Plus, LCDs are much better on the eyes -- if you really start using them, it's painful to go back to CRTs.

Re:Cool

[Eevee]

Funny. I have people asking for flat panals because they want their desks back. That 'desk space' it saves is important because we don't get much of it.

In a large organization, you often have more control over what computer equipment you buy than you do over how the office space is arranged. In a cube farm, a 21" monitor often takes up too much space--particularly if management has never heard of ergonomics so you're forced to balance the keyboard on the little strip of desk right in front of the monitor.

Re:Cool

[targo]

why pay for a 17" mid range LCD screen over a 21" Natural Flat top of the line CRT monitor?

The ratio might come down once US manufacturers also start figuring the cost of recycling into the price. In Europe it is mandatory for computer makers to take back their old stuff, and recycle it in a reasonable way, as opposed to the US where most old computers end up in basements or landfills. Of course, it makes prices higher but in the end, everybody wins.
And recycling a CRT is much more expensive than recycling an LCD, so the price difference is smaller.

Re:Cool

[geeber]

Advancements like this won't help LCDs at all. E-ink NOT an LCD. LCD stands for liquid crystal display. This has nothing to do with liquid crystals; it works by rotating small particles with light and dark colored sides.

Re:Cool

[GigsVT]

Around here a lot of monitors get donated to goodwill, which has no idea how to price them.

I picked up a 17 inch MAG for $5 yesterday. Even if the monitors I buy from them are bad beyond economical repair, I will usually strip the circuit boards with a torch to get the components. The HOT is a nice fast and high power transistor (assuming it isn't burned out).. Lots of nice power circuitry in the power circuits, usually a few low voltage 78XX regulators are in there too. Even if I scrap for components it usually justifies the $5 price.

The CRT itself does usually wind up in a landfill eventually though. On the plus side, most monitors are easily repaired. A lot of probelems that cause people to ditch a monitor are trivial to fix.

Whoa

[A Proud American]

One can only imagine the bragging rights you'd have smoking a 32-bit True Color blunt...

Uses

[brejc8]

Let the speculation for new uses begin!
I always wanted to wallpaper my house with something that I could change at a flick of a swich.
At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.
During the day I could watch tv or browse the web on any wall in the house.
Or even implant cameras in the other rooms so it would look like you have see through walls.

Ah well back to the reals world.

Re:Uses

[DJPenguin]

At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.

Hmmm... that already happens in my room! OH! My mistake, I left the curtains open.

Two Words

[Anonymous Coward]

Dynamic Wallpaper. And not the kind on your computer desktop either.

Imagine being surrounded by thousands of ever-changing images of Bettie Page all the time.

mmmm

That's just great.

[grub]

Now I'll have to wear my glasses when I go to the can or I might accidently wipe my arse with my LCD display.

Uses

[darkov]

At a refresh rate of 4Hz, it's not much use as a monitor, I think they currently use this stuff for signage displays and the like. It might be useful for a e-book sort of thing, where it's unlikely you'll be reading faster than four pages a second.

The big question is how much does it cost and how durable/stable is it?

Obvious...?

[m00nun1t]

"Let the speculation for new uses begin!"

Isn't the first use for every new technology a new way of accessing, displaying or making pr0n?

This is not LCD.

[warlock]

A quick glance at the linked article would be sufficient to figure out they're not LCD. I'd be very surprised if they made LCD displays that could be rolled like that!

Is it just me?

[alwsn]

Maybe it's just me, but I've been visiting slashdot for 3+ years now, and I keep seeing articles about new, paper thing, cheap displays that will revolutionize everything, and really small, cheap, huge(storage capacity), solid state storage devices.

I look forward to new stuff as much as anyone, but in those 3 years, hard drive storage and monitors keep making slower (in comparison to what is mentioned in articles such as these), but steady process.

I no longer trust articles saying 'everything will be different in a year.' From my experience, it won't be different and revolutionary, it will just be slightly better.

Re:Is it just me?

[roseblood]

Funny didn't I see a story
recently about how hard drives
where leaving CPUs in dust when it comes to capacity/price ratios?

Re:Is it just me?

[MikeFM]

I usually see these new tech articles and think to myself "Wow, things will be really different in 5-10 years." Asking for it to change dramaticly in even 2-3 years is asking a lot. Also as you say a lot of the changes are incremental so you fail to notice they are taking place. It's now pretty affordable for the average yokel (me) to have a terabyte of disk space at home, a tiny computer that is quiet, a nice lcd screen, and broadband. For the most part 3 years ago that stuff was available but cost a lot more. These new technologies are creeping out the door - mostly being sold to other companies - but they are emerging as real products. They still tend to cost a lot and be hard to find but they are showing up.

Also it should be noted with development guys that they either take one of two personalities.. the cautious "It'll be ready in 30 years." guys and the gungho "Tomorrow we're all going to have jet packs." guys. Obviously the later make more interesting news sources because only ubergeeks plan 30 years into the future. I guess I'm both. I'm very gungho about what I'm doing now but am already looking into what I might be working on in 30 years. Nobody quotes me for articles though. :)

A cool use...

[Flounder]

Walls covered with these displays on the inside that can display anything. No need for windows, just make the displays show what's outside. The appearance of glass walls without the privacy issues. The only thing missing will be natural sunlight and opening a window for a breeze. But you can make any s**thole apartment seem to be a cabin in the woods, or beachfront property, or floating 150 miles above the planet's surface.

Re:A cool use...

[grahamlee]

Without UV radiation that comes from the sun through windows, humans would become very ill or die

I can assure you, having done practicals in Atmospheric Physics involving UV spectroscopy, that glass is opaque to UV light, by and large. Hint to anyone taking a Physics degree: you're not too lazy to throw the detector out the window, then pull it back in when the spectrograph is complete...

Just what the spamsters were waiting for

[warmcat]

Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens

New! Look bigger in jeans!

finally...technology in the bathroom

[thomas_klopf]

We know we're finally in an information age when we can start leaving technology in the bathroom...

Doormats!

[John3]

This would be so cool on a door mat. Set up a CCTV system that scanned a person's face when they rang your doorbell. If they're a friend the doormat LCD says "Welcome!". If it's a pair of guys in white shirts with ties and name tags then the doormat displays "Bug off!"

Why not an electronic newspaper?

[Oculus Habent]

Sure, you can't fold it, but you could roll it up in to a 1" tube that contains batteries, communications, etc. Carry a 1-foot long 1" diameter tube that rolls out into a 19" screen. And it could be much smaller if you wanted.

This would be perfect for "paperback" e-books. Even with the quarter-second refresh time on the screen it would acceptable for "turning the page". Or you could produce a book of the screens, and have the pages fill in with whatever you are reading.

How about electronic blueprints? Dynamic wall art that you can move around easily? Status displays on pillars in the airport?

If they can reduce the refresh time it would be incredible. Imagine a roll-up 19" screen for crowded server closets.

Uses

[Anonymous Coward]

This would need a display that refreshed itself every 15 milliseconds. The new screen currently takes around a quarter of a second.

The best use I can think of is to give these out to all my competitors at the next LAN party. Then I will reign supreme despite my limited skillz and total lack of eye-hand coordination.

My Use for This...

[naelurec]

I am a musician (pianist) ... Currently I play at a church and for each service, I have to pull music from 5 different books + sheet music, etc..etc..

Needless to say, first, its a pain to carry around those books with me, flipping through them during a service, finding particular songs, etc...

So back in 1999 when I bought my Visor Deluxe PDA, I thought it would be cool to scan in all of that sheet music and have the PDA hooked up to some e-paper sheets (probably two of them) and then use a foot switch to "turn the pages" ..

The setup would be very cool, small and portable. Before a service, I'd simply download the lineup into the system and everything would be ready to go. No carrying around the books, no page flipping, etc.. Heck .. given the way I play the piano (music laying flat on top of the piano), it could possibly make it look like I memorized all the music to the congregation :-)

Of course, I heard about e-paper back then as well.. and so far, no products.. so by the time it *IS* released, i might already use something like a tablet PC ....

Dupe

[x mani x]

This is a dupe of a recent story. At least the articles it points to are different. Same product, though.

-Mani

Clothes as displays?

[vidnet]

Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens.

I hope they add an alpha channel to those!

Cheap enough to use as?

[unfortunateson]

The two goals, which in my mind are separate directions, are speed and independence from wires.

If I can 'print' an e-book, I don't care about refresh rate. But is a 300-page e-paperback cheaper than buying, say 50 paperbacks? 20 paperbacks? Or is it silly to even think of having 300 pages of this stuff, and I'd just 'leaf' through pages like I do on my PDA currently? Maybe I'm old, but I still like the page-flipping aspect of books, especially if I want to flip back to find when a character that just stepped out of the wings first showed up.

If this stuff is as durable, and as cheap, power-friendly and fast as LCDs, I'd be happy to drop a fair chunk of my PDA's weight. Cell-phone screens sound like another perfect application.

Now for the more far-out stuff:
How about rewritable MTG cards?
Medical 'patches' that tell you when they need replacing, or can monitor glucose or other body functions.
Devices when you need to measure bend

Re:Cheap enough to use as?

[Hanji]

I still like the page-flipping aspect of books, especially if I want to flip back to find when a character that just stepped out of the wings first showed up.
I think that's a really good point. Getting a good, intuitive, interface is going to be really important to getting e-books adopted, IMO. With a paperback, you can mark a page with a finger, and flip back to find something earlier. If you have an idea of where something was earlier in the book, you can flip through and find it pretty quickly, just by reading little snippets of pages to figure out where you are in the story. E-books are going to need some kind of nice, easy-to-understand-and-learn interface that offers equivalent functionality if e-books are ever to become common.

Re:upcoming slashdot headlines

[Angry White Guy]

From the article:

The screen is less than 0.3 millimetres thick, flexible enough to be rolled into a tube just 4 mm across and can be viewed from almost any angle.

So the thickness can be given as 0.3 mm with any accuracy.
Googling for toilet paper thickness, single ply is about 0.004 inches thick, and with a conversion of 25.4mm to an inch, you get 0.010mm thickness, for a grand total of 30 times the thickness of toilet paper (minus quilting).

Also, the screens are black and white, raising and lowering white and black dots, so there is no backlighting necessary. So you just need the controller width plus enough room to move the dots.
Put some effort into your trolls :)

Not LCD....

[WareW01f]

Here is what the display is made of... And here is the last ./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!

As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...

Re:Not LCD....

[mindriot]

The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change.

From the Gyricon link you gave:

17. Can SmartPaper(TM) be tampered with electronically?
No. Due to the way signs are constructed, they can not be tampered with by magnets, static electricity, PDAs, cell phones, or other electronic devices.

So I suppose he rather had something like a strong coil?

Folding, bending.

[j1mmy]

The point of these displays (as stated in the article) is to create a one-page newspaper. They can currently roll it up pretty well, but it can't be folded. What I want to know is why you would fold it.

If it's a one-page newspaper, you've only got one page. It can be the size of an 8.5x11 piece of paper. It's an entirely different presentation medium and they're still thinking in terms of traditional papers. The biggest failure of the traditional newspaper (as an interface) is that you have to do all the folding and whatnot. Most papers can't be held with one hand without folding them up a bit. It's a hassle, plain and simple.

If you've got one sheet of electronic paper, of a reasonable size, you can hold it in one hand and just read it.

I can see how folding would be useful for storing the paper, but I don't see that as a critical issue.

Re:Folding, bending.

[Unregistered]

i would hate this if it couldn't be forlded. it' would be too easy to break. what if someone sits on the roll, or bumps in to it. I think it's more of a durability thing. would you want to carry something that fragile on the subway?

Re:Sorry, slashdot editors are total fu*king idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

"I've HAD IT."

Then leave. Seriously. Understand the fact that the reason there may be a lack of "journalistic integrity", as you call it, is because they aren't journalists. Relaying news does not make you a journalist just as telling you what the weather is like doesn't make you a meterologist.

Besides, I don't think you've "HAD IT". The fact that you responded to your post because of some moderation proves that not only have you not "HAD IT", but you stick around and reload over-and-over again just to see if your comments get responded to or moderated. Get a fucking life. Sitting here and pointing out mistakes, as they are bound to appear on this site, no matter who the editors are, is useless.

Feh.

[dynayellow]

I've invented a paper-thin material than can support an INFINITE number of dots per inch! It's dirt cheap and uses exisiting technology!

Oh wait, that's just some paper I had lying around...

Farewell Horizontal

[handy_vandal]

How about programmable animated tattoos using skin-mountable biofoil?

The idea appears in K.W. Jeter's Farewell Horizontal, an engaging novel about motorcycle gang warfare on the outer face of a miles-high cylinder.

Forget the LCDs

[ryanvm]

Forget the LCDs - the real story here is that a Slashdot editor made an attempt to prevent dupes. ;-)

e-book reader from Matsushita

[soramimicake]

How about an application like this e-book reader (Japanese news release and pictures). Here is a CNET article that talks about it.

Basically, it is 2 XGA displays at 180dpi that doesn't require refresh, so can last a few months on 2 AA batteries. It reads contents stored on an SD card. The weight is only 500 gram. I like physical books compared to bulky PDAs with small screens, but something like this could become serious competition to them.

msnbc has purty pictures of it

[circletimessquare]

http://msnbc.com/news/910466.asp?0cv=CB20

it reminds me of pictures of the first transistors at bell labs- all bulky and ungainly

but in it's picture you see the future gleaming bright ;-)

oops! my post is a karma-whoring dupe! sorry! ;-P

Re:But you were paper thin...

[Blaine Hilton]

Now they are going to start considering books weapons and banning them from planes.

--
Have something to calculate?

Re:Sorry, slashdot editors are total fu*king idiot

[MikeFM]

If you can do better then go forth and do so and make yourself some cash and get a little fame. If not then get over it. You don't have to pay to read - if you want to bitch then subscribe.

Paper thin LCDs

[Overly Critical Guy]

Paper thin LCDs?

Oh, that's right; you didn't read the article. And everyone making their lame LCD jokes didn't either. A quick glance at the article will reveal to you Slashbots that it's not LCD.

Okay, so it was a dupe and the editor points it out. But did he even read the article? The headline is completely wrong. Slashdot has been quite bad this year.

I'll either be ignored, modded down, or the self-righteous Slashbot defenders will jump on me, declaring it a-okay for Slashdot to post incorrect headlines and misleading summaries because I can go somewhere else. Most of those people are actually subscribers attempting to justify their payment of money to these people.

Next.

First, laptop screens

[Otto-matic]

Before we postulate on the sci-fi products that will be available in a decade, why not implement this technology into current portable units? A laptop computer with a screen that actually folds out or extends horizontally when the lid is opened would make for great, expansive portable computing. It seems this is imminently more immediate than a producing auto-updating newspapers and the like. Imagine a 12-inch Powerbook G4 with a wide-screen cinema display based on this paper-thin technology. I understand that this requires waiting for a 24-bit version of this 2-bit display, but i think it's worth considering. I wonder what would be the possibility of making this technology interactive? Developing a touch screen version of the same display would open up a world of possibilities. I also seem to remember a fantastic implementation of similar tech in the movie "Red Planet." The computers, voice and touch activated were built like scrolls. The screen was retractable from within a small cylinder. I know we all agree that the possibilities are seemingly endless... Wow. Otto