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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.'"
Um, it's only fairly recently-ish we've had sub-6ms LCDs... it's funny you mention 8 ms because 8 ms is widely considered the "acceptable" gaming threshold, at least in my research when I was looking at buying an LCD a year ago or so. (Note: I held off until a couple months back, and my current display is 2 ms latency.) Not to mention, the panels on older laptop computers had significantly higher latency, and they were quite usable for basic office tasks.
Dude - I was making a joke play of the Weird Al line in All About The Pentiums -- about the newbie that had 'white-out all over your screen'. Besides, to be fair it doesn't say that paper would be made out of this liquid, just that it would provde the color/images. More likely is that this liquid would be the coating on the paper.
21st-Century-Citizen
Any electrical current will generate a magnetic field. I don't know why you think you need coils. Coils are used because the field overlaps on itself and there is an additive effect. But the article does not say how strong the field has to be, so there's no reason to believe that it will be necessary to use coils. It all depends on how strong the magnetic field needs to be.
"It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space"
There is no need to "contain" the magnetic field, since each pixel would be dominated the nearest magnet (magnetic fields dissipate rapidly with distance).
You're right that the change isn't instantaneous on a CRT, but the maximum refresh rate of a CRT is very much related to the decay rate of the phosphors, at least after you adjust for the marketing lies. That's why fixed-frequency 60 Hz monitors (or TVs) don't have huge flicker problems, but a multi-sync monitor with a 180 Hz maximum refresh will put you into seizures if run with a 60 Hz refresh.