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Researchers Devise New Printing Technique To Produce High-Resolution Color Images Without Using Ink (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have taken inspiration from creatures like butterflies and peacocks, whose wings and feathers create bright, iridescent colors not through light-absorbing pigments, but by bending and scattering light at the molecular level, creating what's known as structural color. The new printing method the team has developed starts with sheets of plastic covered in thousands of microscopic pillars spaced roughly 200 nanometers apart. To get those tiny plastic pillars to produce color, or at least appear to, they're first covered with a thin layer of germanium -- a shiny, grayish-white metalloid material. An ultra-fine laser blasts the germanium until it melts onto each pillar, strategically changing their shape and thickness (Editor's note: original research paper). This is then followed by a protective coating that helps preserves the shape and structure of all those tiny pillars. When light hits this modified plastic surface, the lightwaves bounce around amongst the various pillars, which end up changing their wavelength as they're reflected, producing different colors. The researchers were able to predict what colors would be produced by those nanoscale pillars, and by creating specific patterns, they were able to generate recognizable, high-contrast images.
WTF? 300-600 dpi is the actual state of the art - perhaps 1200 at the outside. Somebody doesn't have a clue in hell about the technology.
how far away are we from cheap commercial versions?
So how huge is a printer like this. (yes, I know it's a prototype, but...)
How thick are the pages with their tiny crystal towers?
How much does it cost per page?
Do the colors shift when you bend the page?
Can you even bend the page?
Is boosting the resolution by a factor of 2.5 in each direction even visible to the human eye?
Something seems off about the resolution comments in this post. 127,000 dots per square inch only works up to 356.37 dots per linear inch. Laser printers have had 300 dots per linear inch resolution since the late 1980s. Somebody tell me what I'm missing here... thanks!
Color laser printers tend to do worse than B&W ones for resolution.
To get those tiny plastic pillars to produce color, or at least appear to
If it appears to produce colour, then it's producing colour. That's what colour is...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Still sounds expensive with all these layers you need to do the job.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Did you see the unbelievably life-like color in those samples? The shot of the Taj Mahal is especially stunning.
Have you ever seen the first photograph ever taken? If I recall, it was a view looking out a window in France. It looks like a swirl of grey with almost no definition. Certainly, unless you're specifically told what you're looking at, no one would ever guess.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
They seem to be comparing dots per inch with dots per square inch, but I think what they really did is leave out the "square" in the comparison.
If they mean 5000 dots per square inch for a inkjet printer, that's 71 dots per inch.
For comparison, "127,000 dots per square inch" comes to ... 356 dots per inch.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Since this technology is fundamentally incompatible with regular paper, it is going to be an expensive niche product.
They talk about making the plastic sheets reusable, which is the only way I see this technology being generally useful. But then they have to worry about printing onto used, degraded media.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I use a black & white monitor, you insensitive clod!
(I'm reminded of a comedian's comment on the waste of advertising color television sets on television: "If you have a black and white TV, you can't see the color. If you have a color TV, you can't see how much better the color is. And if you have their color TV, they already won you over!")
I use a black & white monitor, you insensitive clod!
(I'm reminded of a comedian's comment on the waste of advertising color television sets on television: "If you have a black and white TV, you can't see the color. If you have a color TV, you can't see how much better the color is. And if you have their color TV, they already won you over!")
That's why color TVs were displayed in shop windows. So people walking by could see the difference. Plus, in those days commercials were pretty much limited to soap and brill cream... At least, that's what I get from watching old black and white TV shows.... Today it's drugs and car commercials...
And cigarettes. Lots and lots of cigarettes.
Color printing with the "special sauce" already baked into the paper has been around for awhile. ZINK paper is sold under the Polaroid brand name; it's used for making instant photos from digital sources.
The problem these type of technologies suffer from is that plain paper and ink is already ridiculously cheap to manufacture. A sheet of paper with a special coating covering its entire surface is always going to cost more per print.
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DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Dont forget the vitameatavegemin commercials. I watched the blooper reel of the filming of that commercial. Truly a work of art. Especially that curly haired red haired model who was pitching it... But I don't think that commercial ever ran.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's 127k dots per square inch. AKA 356 dpi.
file:
*Double-checks the periodic table and inventory* Uh, isn't this one of those elements we are chronically in short supply of? I mean, one hand, an increase in demand can lead to an increase in supply, but on the other hand...fairly certain we were restricting use of this one to building satellites & that kind of stuff...or with our movement back to coal as an energy source do we no longer care about that?
You are way wrong, and so is the fluff tech news article. You need to look at the paper.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Printers can do way better than 71 dots per inch.
They're talking about scan lines. DPI is the standard unit for printer and scanner quality
Work Safe Porn
127,000 dpi, what's with the archaic units? Roughly 200 nm/dot?
Which asshole modded that down? In fact my estimate was bang on, according to Figure 1B. Sheesh. What happened to the quality of Slashdot readers? Well there is a bright side: when you kids get to high school you will at least have some technical exposure.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It could pose a health risk depending on the type of plastic and the reactions that occur under heat and UV. For example, Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) could potentially react to Germanium to produce Germanium Tetrachloride. Although I suspect if it were PVC, simply burning it would be more dangerous and release chlorine gas.
I suspect these sheets will be another case of plastic that cannot be recycled. If you ever tried to recycle overhead transparency sheets, you'll find nobody will take them. They are a blend of polyester and acetate and there is no practical recycling of them, so they go into a landfill.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
this invention clearly promises a great path to even more expensive printing.
If I were those researchers, I would have spoken of potential use cases not quite competing with ordinary laser printers.
The quality of slashdot readers is slightly lower but the quantity is much greater.
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And so nother hopeful candidate steps up for the 'how clueless can I sound after not reading the paper" award.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.