E-paper comes of age

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: The newest, cutting-edge displays are more papyrus than plasma screen. Electronic paper, long hyped as the technology that would make newspapers and books obsolete, is finally making its way into consumer products, powered by E Ink Corp.

The decade-old Cambridge company has grown 200 to 300% each year, and over the past few months, its retro-looking black-and-white displays have appeared in high-profile products such as the Sony Reader tablet, a Motorola cellphone highlighted at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and a foldable, pocket-sized screen that won the Most Innovative Technology Award at the GSM Association’s 2007 Global Mobile Awards last month.

“They have the incredible screen technology, and they have patents that make what they’re doing pretty unique and unassailable,” said James McQuivey, analyst at Forrester Research. “There are other ways to provide this kind of low-power flexible display, but their technology is really the one to beat.”

While the concept of a digital screen that looks, bends, and folds like paper has been around for decades, E Ink has been a leader in bringing the technology to the marketplace. The company holds more than 100 patents on its ‘electrophoretic’ ink technology—which literally means ‘the movement of particles by an electrical field.’ Electric charges sent along a grid embedded in the paper cause tiny black and white particles to move up and down, creating text and images.

It may take a cosmic cultural shift to make e-books mainstream, but the screens also use so little power that they may herald the birth of a whole new generation of displays, from e-newsprint to digital shelf labels. Unlike traditional digital screens, which form images using light that shines out of the display, e-paper reflects ambient light, adding up to big power savings.

A typical 12-inch tablet display requires the equivalent of 36 AA batteries to stay on for 20 hours —an equivalent electronic paper display would use only one AA battery, according to E Ink marketing director David Jackson.

“With a cellphone, you’ll do something and then stick it against your head. Why should it be sucking up your battery life?” Jackson said. “With new ultraportable devices, you don’t want to have a brick hanging of it” just to keep the device on for a few hours.