E Ink Corporation

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E Ink Corporation is a privately held manufacturer of electrophoretic displays (EPDs), a kind of electronic paper. E Ink is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was founded in 1997 by Joseph Jacobson, a professor in the MIT Media Lab. It has partnered with various companies, including Sony, to allow for the development of products like the Sony Reader which rely on E Ink's patents.

[edit] Technology

Electronic ink is a proprietary material that is processed into a film for integration into electronic displays. The principal components of electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules, about the diameter of a human hair. In one incarnation, each microcapsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. When a negative electric field is applied, the white particles move to the top of the microcapsule to become visible to the reader. This makes the surface appear white at that spot. At the same time, an opposite electric field pulls the black particles to the bottom of the microcapsules where they are hidden. By reversing this process, the black particles appear at the top of the capsule, which now makes the surface appear dark at that spot.

To form an E Ink electronic display, the ink is printed onto a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry. The circuitry forms a pattern of pixels that can then be controlled by a display driver. These microcapsules are suspended in a liquid "carrier medium" allowing them to be printed using existing screen printing processes onto virtually any surface, including glass, plastic, fabric and even paper.