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."

iPod looks impressive but..

[doormat]

I'm guessing they've got a very long way to go before it'll be in a 24" widescreen display. The impressive thing is the contrast level... something like this could make e-books a practical option.

An awesome feature...

[FireballX301]

...would be having this on Tablet PCs.

I didn't see any mention of this, but considering that they say 'it has the consistency of paper' and the extremely high resolution, if it were touch sensitive, it would replace paper/pencil in a way that PDAs couldn't. I couldn't doodle that well on a palm, but with nanotech resolution and a thin enough stylus, notes on a tablet PC would become a reality.

Just my thoughts on this.

fragility?

[zerkon]

a few questions come to mind, obviously the technology is fairly new, but is the physical screen stronger than that of a typical LCD? relative to current LCDs how much would it cost? Will it be sluggish at cold temps like LCDs? I'd love to have one of these on my tablet PC currently pretending to be my car radio, with the cold weather the screen reacts quite slow sometimes.

Re:Power Consumption?

[jessecurry]

it would probably use an intelligent redraw...the entire image wouldn't need to be refreshed, just parts of it. if there were some type of buffer where the data for one screen was held then they could just check to see if that pixel needed to be updated, if so they could update it...if not then they could save power.
An LCD on the other hand has constant power requirements, even if the image is static.

Re:Power Consumption?

[sahonen]

I have no idea how the device works, but I would think you just repaint only the pixels that change from frame to frame. For example, your seconds counter going from 8 to 9 would only really have to change the bottom half of the character. Plus you only need to update when there's a change, instead of constantly refreshing at 30hz or whatever. Even for a scrolling title bar, you're still not having to refresh the entire screen.

What I'm wondering about is internal illumination. Does it rely completely on external illumination, or can you fit a backlight into it so you can read in the dark?

But will need a front light

[jackstack]

"Doesn't need a backlight because it's reflective"? - doesn't that mean it needs some light to reflect? I thought it must be emissive to be truly backlight free like oleds.

Not quite the market

[WinterpegCanuck]

Like they said in the article, it takes more power to render the image initially than LCD, so I don't think full motion movies/games/general screen is what they are aiming at. The strength in this product is the image lasting and having the readability of paper. I may just speak for myself, but I hate reading for great lengths from the screen, usually sending things to the laser to read from the page. The eBook they show in the last link is where the power of this guy is realized.

I agree though, it looks like they are having difficulties with the larger screen, as the Ipod screen held the image fine, but the author stated he had to keep refreshing the ebook.

Re:Power Consumption?

[Too Much Noise]

but how will that save energy on displays which, for instance, require frequent repaints?

Apparently it draws "more" power to change the state of the molecules - due to having to move around charge. Otherwise, the base layer acts as a capacitor, with the stored charge maintaining the on/off state. So you end up spending power mostly on the pixels that change between lit and unlit. Even with full-screen repaints not all pixels switch (think scrolling a page: lots of pixels just stay white between successive repaints) thus you can still get lower power consumption. Of course, for color displays this will probably be less efficient.

Re:Nifty..

[Cracell]

reminds me, what ever happened to those paper thin screens? I want one of them things, if they ever actually come out, less I read some problem with temperature or something

Re:Hmm, seems to be a confusion...

[rusty0101]

There are two issues that cause me to print out a to-do list, purchase paper books, and so on. The first is the resolution of the display. Books are generally printed at a resolution between 600 and 1200 dpi. The best my laptop or pda can get is about 100 dpi.

The second is usability life. Laptops range from 2 to 4 hours of usable time while reading a text document. Then you have to re-charge it. A book generally never needs to be recharge. It's feasable to take a book and sit on the beach for 8 hours, (I might burn rather sevearly, but that's me) I would not recomend trying that with a laptop. Additionally in this scenario, cleaning the sand out of the book is going to take a lot less effort than doing the same for your laptop.

If the resolution tripples (or more) in each direction, and over the long term takes less energy to display, then we are begining to get to where I would be much happier using such a device than I am carrying around a book. (A novel appropriate fot taking on a vacation can be rather large.

But that's just me. I don't think this is the best that Nanotechnology has in our future. I do think it's one of the better uses for Nano Materials Sciences that have come down the pipeline so far.

-Rusty

E-Ink

[everklear]

E-Ink anyone?

E-Ink Website [eink.com]

It seems to me these guys are already doing this. Perhaps this is competition?

Re:The Irish!

[Bazman]

Now we know why this is vapourware and will never make it to colour screens - did you ever see the Guinness ads with the tagline "Not everything in black and white makes sense"

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/bicy cl e.html

Mpeg advantage

[nounderscores]

A happy coincidence that the MPEG encoding format selectively keeps the parts of the screen that change to compress moving images.

An MPEG decoder card designed for this screen embedded in a purpose built portable dvd player could actually be easier to implement than for a raster screen.