Nanotech Based Display

yodha writes "Ntera showed their NanoChromics Display (NCD) recently. The display uses a nanotechnology process to create a more paper-like image than traditional LCD screen. It delivers significant power savings (they've shoehorned one into an iPod to give people a sense of what it looks like). The image can even remain on the screen for weeks without any power and doesn't need a backlight."

Comments

more vaporware?

[7Ghent]

So many e-paper technologies...so much vaporware.

Re:more vaporware?

[Mattsson]

Well... To me, this doesn't seem like neither e-paper nor vaporware.

A technology that incorporates discs of *glass*, like tft's, lcd's and this display, can't really be thought of as e-paper.

And though one should be sceptic when reading about "working prototypes", they seem to have actually demonstrated that modified iPod to people.
Most "e-paper" vaporwares has never reached such a working state...

Re:more vaporware?

[Xorath]

I'm not sure I'd call this vaporware, they're demonstrating the product with what looks like a good business model and implementation model that would make the technology feasible.

I agree the color version would be that much better and add to that a 60fps refresh rate and then you've got yourself a nifty technology. But if they can truly bring into production what they're claiming then this has some pretty decent applications.

Very Nice

[Omkar]

I like the increased contrast. But can anyone elaborate on "nanotachnology processes"? That's like saying any common appliance uses "electromagnetic processes".

Power Consumption?

[rincebrain]

TFA claims that initially, it will draw more power than an LCD to paint the display, but the image will remain without additional repaints, saving energy.

Now, I'd like to think I'm not an idiot...but how will that save energy on displays which, for instance, require frequent repaints? Let's say that I'm running my iPod with one of those screens, as they show in the article. The thing has to draw segments of the bar frequently, update the time remaining once per second, draw the entire "Now playing:" row to create the "scroll" effect for long titles, redraw the top if you have a clock running up there, et cetera, et cetera.

Another example would be a touch-sensitive screen. In a drawing tablet, I'd imagine the repaint levels are not going to be particularly low, especially for full-tablet images...

I suppose my question becomes...is it actually less power-hungry than traditional LCDs for its practical uses?

Re:Power Consumption?

[binarybum]

I'm guessing this is nowhere near ready for video rate stuff - in which case you're probably right - during normal operation it would probably use more power, but I'm guessing most of the power modern monitors consume is with the screen just sitting there idle while the user reads something on the page or is away eating lunch.

However, for something like an e-book or a clock display the necessary refresh rate/percentage is relatively low - making this system optimal. Also, not having a backlight should save quite a bit of power too (however, I suppose at times a front light will be needed).

Re:Power Consumption?

[rusty0101]

On the assumption that most displays actually have a very small number of pixels that change with any frequency. As an example, look at an 8 element digital clock, every second the unit's second changes, every 10 seconds the tens seconds changes, every minute the minute changes, and so on. from any 30th of a second to another, the vast majority of the time, nothing has changed, so nothing needs to be refreshed, or changed.

Likewise with a spectrum analyzer view on an mp3 player. It's rather rare for the area between the bars in the analyzer to change. It's also rare that the frame, labels under the bars, scale lines, etc. change.

In an LCD system, all of those pixels need to be refreshed every refresh cycle. In this system once the pixel is set, no energy is used to keep that pixel set at that level.

Looking at my screen right now, easily 95% or more of the screen is not changing from one second to the next. Yet the entire screen is using energy to refresh itself many times a second (50-70 Hz I believe for this screen)

The place where such an interface would be expected to use significantly more energy would be in a Television type interface. Including video games on a PC which you may or may not consider related.

I don't really get your example of a touch-sensitive screen. The areas that would draw energy to be repainted are those where the stylus or mouse pointer are located. Unless you are using some interface that draws lines all over the screen when you move the stylus from one pixel to another close to it, the only pixels that should be affected are those relevant to the brush or tool in question. For a Select this usually means a couple of lines of pixels vertically, and horizontally change. Applying effects, afrects a large portion of the screen, possibly even the entire screen, but it is usually a one shot event.

Even the notorious blink tag in html documents should only cause energy to be expended with the frequency of the blink.

Let's say that it takes 60 times as much energy for a pixel change on one of these screens than on an LCD (equivalent area example, if you get 9 'nano'-pixels in the same space as an lcd pixel, each nano-pixel using ~7 times as much energy as the lcd pixel, you get what 63 times as much energy used for that same area, close enoug to 60 for this example.) If over 90% of the screen is not changing from one refresh cycle to the next, then in 60 refresh cycles after the initial screen was set, you have approximate parity. That's one to two seconds. Obviously savings go up from there.

But that's just some off the cuff calculating and thoughts. I am sure someone out there, perhaps someone who thinks that 1/20th of a dollar is not the same as 5% of a dollar will elucidate my errors.

-Rusty

there are a bunch of those...

[idlake]

This isn't the only one. There are a bunch of those kinds of display technologies in the pipeline: basically, LCD displays, but with small scall structures that increase contrast, viewing angle, and persistence.

It's a good short term solution because switching manufacturing over to those kinds of technologies should be fairly easy.

The disadvantage is that those are still heavy glass sandwidches, with all the problems that brings with it. eInk, OLED, and other new display technologies give far more flexible and lightweight displays, and promise significant weight savings.

nano nano

[hhawk]

There are lots of things these days that operate at or involve nano-meter technology, but what specifically about this produce uses Nanotech?

For me, Nanotech is enginering with Atoms; purposely building tiny machine on the Nanometer scale that do things like filter specific atoms to produce "pure" materials, act as a computer or build a rocket engine in a vat of liquid.

Re:nano nano

[rusty0101]

The big 'buzz' around nanotech is the original intent of actually manipulating individual atoms, and using esentially atom-by-atom assembly build robots that worked at this level and could replicate themselves.

That is what got the thought of 'nanotech' into the buzzword realm.

This is not that. Nor is chemestry. Nor is the semi-conductor industry. Or for that matter pretty much any product on the market that uses the nano modifier.

Effectively everything that is on the market that includes something with a nano modifier is materials science where the materials in question happen to be working in the low nanometer range.

This is not to take away from the fact that much of this nano level materials science is actually some pretty impressive stuff. It's just stuff that is using 'nano' as a marketing term to attract attention, rather than nano as an idea of the scale upon which a device or tool is functioning.

Then again, that's just my opinion. Drexler is the person who should be reffered to for better information.

-Rusty

Less eye strain!

[gilkyboy]

Mmmm, less power= less light shining in my eyes. Sounds like I might not need to increase the strength of my contacts after all!

This is not nanotech

[jhsewell]

Puhlease. This isn't nanotechnology. Until you have created a nanoassemblier, a self-replicating nanobot, or a gray goo apocalypse you aren't actually using "nanotechnology". You're making something made of very small pieces. Congrats, but it isn't nanotech.

Start by reading "Engines of Creation" and get back to me when you're not a marketing droid trying to hop on the nanotech bandwagon.

I can see lots of applications

[jim_v2000]

First off, something I always thought would be cool is to have a digital picture frame. But the ones that I see a lot today just plain suck. Too thick and monitor-ish. If these looked like paper, it would be ez to make a digital pic frame out of it, and it would look good. Shoot, the things are cheap and sturdy, you could send grandma one in the mail, and not have to worry about losing the image.

A cool device that I would like to see, if this is thin enough, is an ebook device that actually looks like a book with pages, but each of the pages is a sheet of this stuff that contains a different piece of literature, and you could have like a USB hookup where the binding of hte book would normally be for syncing with a computer.

I don't know how thin this stuff is, but it would rock to have a lightweight monitor that you could hang on your wall. I know, LCD's already do that, but this stuff seems way cooler.

A device that you could draw on, and it would look good! And have good battery life! Like a digital drawing board or artists pad.

Cheaper, longer lasting battery life PDA's!

Ditto for cell phones!

And probably a whole bunch of other things!

Re:I can see lots of applications

[Anonymous Coward]

If each page is a different work of literature... you've got an art/marketing phenomenon, I guess, but consider the usability. You probably can't fold back the spine like a real book (well, you could, but the lifetime of flexible electronics is still as weak as the spine on a paperback), and if you want each page to represent a single work, you're stuck scrolling anyway.

If you request a USB hookup, that means all the work might as well reside on a small USB stick or "Gumstix" computer in the spine anyway, and the pages are only providing display. So all you really need is one 'sheet,' in a suitably-protective frame, with a comfortable handgrip and scrolling controls.

Remember, the 'book' was just a bodge on the problem of producing and storing long rolls of papyrus; there's not really anything magic to the art of page-turning. However, you do need decent coding and appropriate display tech (perhaps with 'motion-prediction,' to avoid LCD-like smear, but in a general purpose device, that could easily be done in the rendering software) to create output that 'scrolls' smoother than movie credits.

Odd review

[JavaRob]

What a strange review -- first they give us a nice photo comparing the new screen in an iPod to the standard LCD... but the standard iPod example is turned off. There's nothing on the screen we can compare with.

Okay, maybe they're really keen on the new tech and are trying to skew things its way.

But no, further down they discuss the eBook reader example. "This ebook looked great, and really shows off the power of the digital paper. Alas, I had to keep pressing the contrast button to refresh the image. Perhaps the technology is not as far along as the company suggested."

Huh? Anything you can achieve by pressing a button is easily achievable through software, isn't it? This is just a minor flaw in the implementation of this particular prototype... and says nothing useful about the actual screen.

Anyway, I'm sure more thoughtful reviews will be coming along soon -- this looks like pretty solid and exciting tech to me. It may not be suitable for many screens (i.e., it takes *more* power than a standard LCD if the pixels are all changing frequently... so you wouldn't watch a movie on it), but it'd be perfect for putting little status monitor screens on all kinds of things, plus for the applications they prototyped.

Re:Odd review

[Feanturi]

Huh? Anything you can achieve by pressing a button is easily achievable through software, isn't it?

What I got out of the line you quote was: The need to refresh a static page that is supposed to be able to stay that way *without power* for weeks at a time suggests that the technology is not yet where they are trying to get it. It is not as stable as needed for their claim to be true.

Keeping it constantly refreshed with software to get around this deficiency sort of goes against a major feature touted by the technology, doesn't it? Though maybe I missed your point, if so I appologize.

Re:But will need a front light

[Feanturi]

Well sure, just like regular paper needs some light for you to see what's on it. You shouldn't be trying to read in the dark anyway, I don't know why some people are picking on that.

eBooks that update

[tod_miller]

Order a book off amazon, then flash the latest errata in, have animated tutorials in them.

The best part of this is the image staying without power...

Greetings cards with full motions pr0n videos!!

Shirt ties that gets hacked in meeting and turn into giant trouser snakes.

Oh the fun.

Re:Not quite the market

[netwiz]

Well, it may take more power than an LCD, but just about every electronic component in a laptop does. LCDs don't use that much power by themselves, but the backlight they require does. I'd be willing to bet that the increased power drain is more than offset by the savings incured by the loss of the backlight.

Re:consistency of paper

[caswelmo]

That's my basic problem with all of these "writable screen" technologies. None of them have the give & dragging resistance that paper & pen(cil) have. I'm even picky about what kind of pen I use on paper, because some pens just suck to write with. It seems to me that it will be a while before I can write on a screen and feel comfortable doing it.

Besides, how would I lose my notes if they're all conveniently located on my PC? Where's the fun in that?

Re:That iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, that 20 hours battery AND that new display would make that new battery, what, 25 hours? Perhaps even more?

It's about making the best thing possible, just not "good enough".

If you can have both the new, lower-power display, and the bigger battery, why not use both?