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Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs
InvisblePinkUnicorn writes "NewScientist reports on a color-changing liquid that could cheaply replace the color components of standard LCDs. According to researchers at UC Riverside, the liquid 'contains tiny iron oxide particles coated with plastic. It is cheap and easy to make, and could also be used in flexible, rewritable, electronic paper.' From the article: 'The opposing forces of electrostatic repulsion [in the plastic] and magnetic attraction [in the iron oxide] result in the particles arranging themselves into an ordered structure, known as a colloidal "photonic crystal". The colloidal crystal reflects light because the spacing between neighboring particles in the structure is equivalent to the wavelength of light. Also, tuning the spacing slightly alters the exact wavelength, or colour, of light that is reflected. This can easily be done by varying the strength of the magnetic field applied to the crystal.'"
And it's called white-out, duh!
What would the response time be for these iron-oxide particle coated with plastic goop be? Anything over 6 or 8ms would be a problem for anything but static displays.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I'm tired of these new technologies that never make it out to the customer. Stop telling me what we could do, and do it already!
how would I see the screen? Chameleon...camouflage...can't see.
I remember having fun with powerful magnets and CRTs, does this mean LCD panels made with this new liquid be susceptible to magnetic fields too?
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Huh, polystyrene coated iron oxide? Did they just re-invent toner?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
the tags are right. The brown color is not in the hue (compare with rainbow), so controlling the wavelength is not enough. You'd need to controll brightness at least, and then brown would be kind-of dark-orange.
Also, if you rely on reflecting light (aka. mirror), you rely on fact that the light source HAS this color wavelength in its spectrum. This is not always the case if you don't use sunlight.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Gievn it requires a magnetic field, I wonder if it would require more or less energy than a normal display?
21st-Century-Citizen
Would the particles clump together and ruin the display? You'd think outside magnetic interference would be a significant issue.
21st-Century-Citizen
That truely is a remarkable paint, hotdamn it changes within seconds.
But can it turn plaid?
Tautologies, they are what they are.
It sounds cute, but it's another minor advance in materials science, and a long way from being a new display technology.
The basic problem is that it requires a big array of electromagnets, one per pixel. Fabricating large arrays of electromagnets is expensive; it's hard to fabricate coils using an IC process. And it doesn't scale down well; tiny coils are tough to make. It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space. So electrostatic devices, like LCDs, and emission devices, like plasma panels, tend to win out.
Previous technologies shot down by this fact include magnetic bubble and magnetic core memories. They worked, but they never got either cheap or tiny.
I don't mean to be rude, but, what they have seems a long way away from commercial applications.
Its one thing to move a magnet to and from a tub of liquid and watch it change colors, which is cool, but its another to have millions little magnetic fields inside of a display, not only switching on and off, but varying in intensity.
It just seems like it would be pretty hard to do, but, it is cool that it would not need a backlight.
This is my sig.
The variation in color around the tubes shown in the photos seem to suggest that the color is angle-dependent (not surprising given the photonic crystal design). One would see a redder (longer-wavelength) when viewing straight on to the panel than from any angle to the side. This is NOT acceptable for most applications.
I do hope they can create angle-independence -- perhaps microlenses or shaping of the cell well would help in some way.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Isn't this going to bring back the problem of gaussing/degaussing screens?
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
is that they aren't susceptible to magnetic interference. With modern day TV rooms, this is essential. Even though everyone claims they have "magnetically shielded" speakers, put a few big ones close to a CRT, then tell me whether or not they are truly "magnetically shielded."
For Aiur !
\u262D = \u5350
Sounds like a nice idea, but I wonder the following things:
1. How's the refresh rate? If it doesn't have to constantly refresh, how fast CAN the entire image be changed?
2. What's the energy cost to change the whole image, for a given size surface? Worst case/best case? Partial image change cost?
3. Can I get random access to setting a single pixel without having to recalculate & resend the entire image?
4. What are the predicted cost of materials/cost of manufacture? What sizes could be produced for what costs?
5. Any potentially toxic elements that would keep these devices out of the hands/mouths of children? How would that compare to everyday paper/ink?
6. What is the resolution in terms of computer pixels per size? What is the smallest a 640x480 display equivalent (non-lossy) could be?
7. How much 'room' do the components of this technology take up in the 'substrate' of the surface it is embedded in? How much could be added and still have a flexible display?
8. How durable/redundant can this technology be made to be?
These things will determine how it can be used in the greater marketplace. Can it become the virtual paper of science fiction? Will it become a common part of commercial advertising, from billboards to clothing? Or, will it be limited by fragility or technical shortcomings to isolated or expensive consumer products where it can serve a niche? Or will it just drop off the radar, like countless 'investment opportunity' technologies?
Ryan Fenton
My chemistry is a bit rusty.
... hmmm, not sure how that would work. Still as a simple monochrome writing tablet that both you and a computer could read, it would be cool.
On the other hand, since the method appears to rely on physically moving the particles to adjust to different wavelengths of light, there is an inherent lag time. It would be great for slow-moving but not permanent displays like billboards, airport schedules, and clocks.
But what about using it for an input device? If you had a pen that could generate electromagnetic force at a variable frequency
sigs, as if you care.
Not to sound pessimistic but electronic paper has been out there for quite a while. But still, it's availability is quite null. Apart from sony Librié I haven't seen a lot of devices. Now, why would this technology become popular? Because it's in color? But most of our written media nowdays is still black and white. So unless they can make it refresh fast enough for video, which would make it better for laptops screens, I doubt it will have a future.
This technology is still a long way off. As you can see from this picture, where a magnet is held to the right, causing the substance to change from brown to blue, the resolution and control still isn't very good. If this works though, suddenly we will have much more brilliantly colorful displays, with every color available. Imagine fluorescent orange on your display.....and, since it works by reflection, putting it in bright daylight will only make it more brilliant.
Also, they are talking about using it for liquid paper, but I'm not sure how they are planning on doing that, since once the magnetic field is removed, the picture disappears.
In any case, if the pitfalls in the technology could be overcome, it would be a vast improvement over what we have today. Big if.
--
Looking to trade your girlfriend? Now you can!!
Qxe4
The basic mechanism for reflecting different colors is the same as used in "Zubbles", the yet to be released colored bubbles. The stucture dictates which color is reflected. Popular Science did a long article on the guy who went with this approach when trying to create colored bubbles for kids that didn't stain when popped:
7 010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/0a03b5108e09
Both use the same mechanism butterfly wings or an oil slick on water to reflect different light wavelengths.
I wouldn't be able to play my video games in the dark with this.
What do we use when we run out of Chameleons to liquify?
This is cooler than the iPhone. I'm a bit sceptical about making this into a flexible screen (how do you make a magnetic field in a thin screen?), but this is the first real commercial application of three dimensional photonic crystals that I have ever seen. I wonder if it's really fast enough for LCD screens that you can play FPS games on.
-- Cheers!
You just have too short an attention span. When you first hear about a new technology like this being demo'd it can easily be a decade or more away from the consumer market. Development takes time. Not everything makes it, and generally what doesn't, doesn't for a reason (because it isn't workable) however many do and you simply don't notice it because it takes a long time. Go look at a timeline of LCD display development sometime. It has been a long, long process with many incremental improvements to get to where we are now. Had someone in the 1980s talked about LCD TVs and computer displays they'd have not been wrong, it just needed another decade before it started to teak off and two before it became pervasive.
In the good old days we had CRT monitors at 60Hz, and even at 50Hz and guess what? They didn't flicker! And neither does your TV!!
Nope. The phosphor is designed for that particular refresh rate.
The problems started when PCs decided they wanted to refresh at lots of different rates so the phosphor was designed for the highest rates supported by the monitor.
Result? 60Hz flickered like mad on them.
So...he's right and you're wrong. Ergo, you suck.
No sig today...
Other people have suggested potentially more practical electostatic interferometric displays, like this one. The advantages of this technology, like the classic electrostatic e-paper with the microscopic dual-color beads in oil, is that it doesn't require any power to maintain the display.
Even so, this technology has been around for ten years, and is still in the very early research stages.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I think you are thinking of "Wite-Out" .
A whiteout is a severe snow condition.
A brownout is a power fluctuation.
And a blackout is what the corporate lawyers give you for generalizing their trademarked terms.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
a) I don't see how this could possibly be cheaper than LCDs (and unless it is there's no point).
b) There's this tiny problem of having individual tunable magnets for every single pixel.
c) There's also the problem that the magnetic field of one pixel isn't allowed to influence adjacent pixels - unlikely at any decent screen resolution.
etc.
No sig today...
That's ludicrous.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Well maybe for monster size outdoor screens it could work. Not for desktops though....
No sig today...
a car or even clothes covered with this stuff. You could just change their colour at will with the touch of a button.
Certainly has a plethora of "design" uses if not many "functional" uses.
Check out the picture: The liquid in a magnetic field
And those of you with Interscience acccess here's the pdf
A neat aspect of this is it simply reflects light. It's not a light source. I could see a pool in Vegas using a derivative of this (albeit with a NO PACEMAKER SIGN on it) to make a multi-color pool. Or imagine what the Cirque du Soleil engineers could do with this.
I agree those, in terms of LCD replacement we'd really have to see what the chip guys can do.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Another issue with this, which has yet to be addressed, is that the pixels in this display aren't made up of RGB subpixels. This means that when color is processed by the computer, it needs to be transmitted as a color, rather than shades of RGB. Should this technology come to market, it seems that it would be too impractical to take an RGB signal from the computer, analyze it, convert it to a color, and then display it. It would require an entirely new video driver (possibly new graphics hardware) to output a "color" signal, rather than an RGB signal.
As far as brightness is concerned, this is "easily" solved by backlighting the display with white OLEDs. This way, you have a color and a brightness, everything you need for a pixel.
the liquid 'contains tiny iron oxide particles coated with plastic
In the printer world we call that toner.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
- Exactly. The color would be angle-dependent unless they take steps to prevent this. BTW but you have the color-change backwards - it should be bluest from straight ahead.
- I would get around this by illuminating the screen by a laser, from exactly behind, and then putting a sheet of frosted glass in front of the colored liquid. You would then see the image on the glass and not the liquid.
- For the mass-market, I'd replace the laser with conventional LCD illumination and lots of math. You just have to allow for the pattern of directions at which the backlighting passes through the layer of liquid and adjust the spacing of the particles to compensate. Fortunately computers are good at this sort of thing.
- I would replace the frosted glass by something translucent. I can't do better than OP's idea of microlenses (same sort of thing as a fresnel lens but millions of tiny lenses on one plastic sheet in front of the liquid).
Would-be patenters, please note #3 and #4.Reduce, reuse, cycle
Nothing to see here, move along...
The idea of using the spacing between particles to create color is a really neat idea, but this research has a long way to go before it is usable. Having rust-color e-paper isn't going to be so appealing, so they will need to find a white/clear magnetic particle. They are also going to have to figure out how to vary the intensity. Since intensity of the magnetic field controls the hue, I'm guessing they are going to find need something else to do that. Like maybe an b/w LCD on top...
I wish the article had kept this to "Researcher Varies Color by Magnetic Field", which is pretty nifty, rather than quoting the researcher's air-castles about e-paper that he puts in his grant applications. I doubt this will make it to a display technology, but I wonder if it would have uses in making laser cavities that don't have to be exactly tuned to a multiple of the wavelength (since this will only reflect a certain wavelength).
Even if the refresh rate isn't high enough for video (I didn't RTFA) it would be perfect for low-cost, huge picture frames and even computerized wallpaper, etc.
I can already see things like "Star Trek wallpaper" being available on torrents, makes your walls appear like the NCC-1701D (or whatever the number was), or maybe you feel paranoid, then put Aliens wallpaper up, etc...
This from ...
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
I don't think it will challenge TV-sized media applications anytime soon due to the infrastructure and backplane developement that still needs to be done. On the small scale it would have to compete with electrowetting and e-ink based displays. This technology may provide a very cost-effective solution (no pun intended) for large-scale display applications.
I wonder how tightly the magnetic field needs to be controlled to maintain color accuracy as well as how closely the pixels can be placed together without the field changes in one pixel affecting those adjacent.
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
Oh nos, I just spilled my monitor on my coffee. :(
My friend had a car painted with this stuff in the '90s. Get with it "New" Scientist!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Korean believe Kim Jung-il or Busy more than "NewScientist".
I'm interested to see how the colors compare in brightness...ie will they have a problem with the greens being brighter than the blues?
www.purevolume.com/martyd
From the article:
Article in last weeks New Scientist about nano technology: http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/nanot echnology/mg19526121.400-the-great-nanotech-gamble .html
(abstract only)
The idea behind chameleon liquid looks great, but perhaps we should check to see what it does to the environment before we start to use it for everything.
This is interesting from the perspective of working in an entirely different colour space to CRTs and LCDs. What I can't see, though, is how one would change saturation and brightness in this system. It looks really good for producing rainbow colours, and bad for tonal variation.
You're an idiot.
The rest of your post is correct (if a bit redundant), but when posting such an insult it would be wise to make sure you understand basic grammar.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
Let's see if it can do that! :D
And most of the LCD displays of today have millions of transistors on their surface. Fabricating large arrays of transistors used to be expensive, and was one of the most important reasons why the cost of the first displays was prohibitive. Yet all technologies advance, and products tend to get cheaper... much cheaper!
;) ) ]
[ Not to mention that it is probably much easier to make tiny coils than it is to make tiny neon lights (think plasma displays