Electronic ink technology? How does it work?

yuzin (51)in Popular STEM • 3 years ago

E-Ink is a display technology that tries to reproduce the appearance of ink on paper by using liquid crystals instead of pixels. The majority of these screens only display images in black and white. It has been a long time since color E-Ink technology has been available. There is, in fact, something there. E-Ink technology that uses color, on the other hand, has yet to find its way into consumer electronics products.

Sony's e-book reader, Librie, was the first device to employ e-Ink technology, and it was released in Japan in 2004. It was the first device to use e-Ink technology. This device did not appeal to a large number of people because it was pricey and supported a strict copyrighted file format with a 30-day trial period for its ebooks, both of which were restrictive.

Despite the fact that E-Ink and E-Paper appear to be the same thing, there is a slight difference between the two. So, what exactly is the difference?

When it comes to technology, E-Paper refers to a screen that has the look of paper and contains a wide range of options. E-Paper displays, on the whole, reflect rather than emit energy from their surrounding environment, according to the manufacturer. As a result, external light sources are required to illuminate these screens. The Pebble smartwatch, which is perhaps the most well-known example of an E-Paper display that isn't an E-Ink display, is one such example.

In this procedure, a liquid (fluid) is utilised to inhibit millions of little capsules packed with black and white pigment from being released into the environment. It should be noted that the white pigment is positively charged, whereas the black pigment is negatively charged. Consider it a sandwich, with the liquid layer sandwiched between two layers of electrodes that are divided into zones by a thin layer of liquid. Each region on the screen corresponds to a single pixel.

The entire operation is referred to as electrophoresis in scientific circles. Each zone contains a different amount of pigment, which fluctuates based on how the electrode layers are loaded, and this ratio determines the degree of grey color that is displayed on the screen.

When the bottom electrode generates a positive electric field, the positively charged white pigment rises to the surface. As a result, the negatively charged black pigment falls to the bottom of the container. White pigment is represented by pixels that are the color white.

When the bottom electrode generates a negative electric field, the negatively charged black pigment climbs to the surface of the capsule, causing it to rupture. As a result, a single black pixel appears on the screen.

When the lower electrode generates both positive and negative electric fields, a mixture of black and white pigments rises to the surface of the capsule, indicating that it is working. Depending on whether the pixel is white or black, the grey color will be darker or lighter.

In contrast to an LCD screen, which requires constant power to maintain the content on the screen, E-Ink only requires electricity to change the polarity of the electrodes on a zone-by-zone basis. This suggests that your eBook reader will only use force to turn pages when turning pages. That explains how you can charge your eBook reader only once and use it for up to a month at a time without charging it again.

Because of the pixels necessary to move pages, devices that use e-Ink technology can reduce their power consumption even lower. To put it another way, if a given pixel remains black from one page to the next, no changes are required, and no power consumption occurs.

Some pixels, on the other hand, may become stranded and refuse to move to a new pole as time progresses. In other words, the pixel will remain in position even if the entire page is rotated. "Ghosting" is the term used to describe this phenomenon, and it is usually resolved by executing a complete page refresh. Because of this, when the screens go dark, they turn white, and then they lead us to the website.