E Ink Announces Major Strides in Its Flexible Display Program

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- E Ink Corporation, the leader in electronic paper display technology, today announced advances in its flexible display program with Dr. Michael McCreary highlighting these advances at the recent USDC symposium.

Partner LG.Philips LCD recently announced the world's highest resolution 14.3-inch flexible color display at the January 2008 CES show. This display utilizes E Ink's Vizplex Imaging Film with LG.Philip's metal foil and plastic substrate backplane. The resulting display is less than 300 micrometers thick with a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels and is both rollable and bendable, with no image distortion. "The potential applications for this display are incredible and will allow our customers to create new products that are not only convenient to use but also save natural resources. This represents the next generation in display technology." Said Mr. In-Jae Chung, the company's Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President.

Last week, partner Polymer Vision announced plans to mass produce a rollable display device, Readius(TM) aimed at cell phone applications. The rollable display in the Readius also contains E Ink's Vizplex Imaging Film. "People are demanding greater choice and flexibility in having overall instant access to personal content and information" said Karl McGoldrick, CEO of Polymer Vision. "They do not want to be concerned with small screens, not being able to read in sunlight, a dead battery or a device being too bulky to carry in their pocket."

Partner Plastic Logic announced that it had raised $100 Million in funding and was building the first factory to manufacture plastic electronics on a commercial scale. "Our revolutionary flexible displays using E Ink's Vizplex technology will radically change the way the world receives information," said Dr. John Mills, COO of Plastic Logic.

E Ink has worked with these, and other industry leaders including Prime View International, Samsung and Epson, in developing flexible displays for the market and has pioneered a number of "world's firsts" in the display industry. Displays using E Ink Vizplex Imaging Film are ideally suited for flexible display applications due to their thin form factor and inherent flexibility. E Ink's electronic ink is an image stable reflective display technology that uses ultra-low power but is easily read under any lighting condition including direct sunlight. Unlike liquid crystal displays, the image on E Ink displays looks the same from all viewing angles and will not distort when touched or flexed, making electronic ink the ideal display medium for flexible displays and portable devices.

"We believe the flexible display market will grow at the CAGR of over 120% in the next three years and be over $600 Million in 2010, and electrophoretic display will continue to be the lead among all the display technologies for flexible display." said Dr. Jennifer Colegrove, senior analyst of iSuppli Corporation who is the author of iSuppli's Flexible Display report (2008 version).

"E Ink was founded on the vision of Radio Paper(TM), that is, flexible wireless displays," said Dr Michael McCreary, vice president of advanced research and development at E Ink Corporation. "We are excited that our partners are moving forward with electronic solutions that are not dependent on breakable glass substrates, and, together with E Ink Vizplex Imaging Film, enable new applications that require extremely light weight and rugged displays."

E-paper products shown at SID

"LONG BEACH, Calif. — Electronic paper seems to be coming of age. E Ink Corp. exhibited a slew of recently launched products at the Society for Information Display conference here this week. The Cambridge, Mass., company also showed flexible-display prototypes from half a dozen E Ink customers, signaling a rapid advancement in flexible displays across the industry in the past year.

Meanwhile, Nemoptic, another e-paper contender, talked about its first-generation product for electronic shelf labels for grocery stores, a $10 billion market. Also at SID, Nemoptic is launching its A4 e-paper display for application in business and government offices and point-of-sale displays. The company has already shipped samples to major office equipment suppliers.

Notable "world firsts" using E Ink technologies included a flexible, color 14-inch electronic-paper panel from LG.Philips LCD on steel foil and the biggest-ever glass monochrome electronic-paper panel — 40 inches on the diagonal — from Samsung Electronics.

E Ink also announced that a research breakthrough in its ink chemistry has achieved video-switching speeds for the first time. "Our research team is demonstrating here an ultrabright ink that is approaching 50 percent reflectance of ambient light, compared to 35 percent in shipping monochrome products," said Michael McCreary, vice president of research and advanced development at E Ink.

Samsung Electronics demonstrated a 40-inch display using E Ink's Vizplex technology, which consumes 300 milliwatts at one frame per minute, or 1/500 the power consumption of a conventional LCD. Such a display using electronic ink would be appropriate for digital signage and office information applications, according to E Ink.

One of he most popular e-books incorporating E Ink displays is Arinc's eFlyBook, the General Aviation eReader used by commercial pilots to look up airport takeoff-and-landing approaches.

Six segments
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Jacques Noels, CEO and president of the management board of Nemoptic, has defined six strategic segments with differentiated features and display sizes for his company's BiNem technology. They range from 1 x 3-inch electronic shelf labels to e-books, newspapers, albums and larger (10- to 14-inch) displays for the education and professional markets.

Nemoptic, headquartered near Paris with a production unit in Sweden, is applying its bistable nematic technology to LCDs. Display content remains on view without using any power thanks to the technology's internal-memory effect.

Nemoptic has signed on with Seiko Instruments Inc. for high-volume manufacturing of its bistable LCDs at Seiko's Microtechno plant in Akita, Japan. The first units are expected to roll out at the end of the second quarter. The Seiko plant has a worldwide reputation as one of the most modern sites for high-volume production of color supertwisted-nematic liquid-crystal displays."

VIA

More on the new E Ink technology

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- E Ink Corporation, the leading provider of electronic paper display (EPD) technology, today announced the launch of its next-generation electronic ink technology, offering significant improvements in performance and shipping under the new trade name Vizplex(TM) Imaging Film.

"E Ink continues to be at the forefront of the electronic paper revolution. This is a major improvement because the electronic ink in the imaging film switches twice as fast and the image is 20 percent brighter," said Russ Wilcox, president and CEO of E Ink. "We gave it the distinctive Vizplex name so that everyone can easily recognize the next generation. Simultaneously, we are enhancing our whole solution with more screen sizes, improved electronics, support for more gray levels, and developer kits for prototyping."

New Sizes to Support More Applications

E Ink and PrimeView International (PVI), the pioneer and currently the world's sole active matrix EPD maker, jointly announced TFT modules built with Vizplex, in an expanded size range that includes 1.9", 5", 6", 8" and 9.7" diagonal displays. The new modules will be available this summer. The new sizes are targeted at monochrome device applications including mobile phones, MP3 players, PC accessories, smart handheld devices, signage, electronic dictionaries, e-books, and tablets. The previous display generation was only available in a 6" size and was targeted at e-books.

"We are pleased to offer our advanced technologies, proven streamlined manufacturing process and volume capacity to our electronic paper customers," said Dr. Scott Liu, chairman and CEO of PVI. "We have already begun using E Ink's Vizplex Imaging Film in a range of sizes and are confident the market will welcome this new technology."

New Display Controller

E Ink also announced the sampling availability of the Metronome(TM) Display Controller, which adds new functions at a lower cost. The Metronome 8T125100A is a simple, low-power chip that can drive a range of display sizes and resolutions and supports added grayscale depth and lower-level control over the display. The Metronome architecture is designed to integrate with the host processor and memory. This enables a lower cost bill of materials for the total device. The part can be purchased from E Ink or in volume from PrimeView International. E Ink will also continue to support the Apollo controller architecture that emulates a parallel printer port and offers ease of integration for rapid prototyping.

Active Matrix Prototype Kits

To accelerate customers' evaluation and product development, E Ink will offer EPD prototyping kits in more sizes and with both Metronome and Apollo display controller options. The new kits can be pre-ordered now at www.eink.com/kits.

"Using the previous AM-100 prototyping kit, our company was able to quickly explore our design ideas for a revolutionary medical tablet," said Bob Caspe CEO, Emano Tec. "With the new larger size kits, we will be able to design exactly what we need for our next generation product."

More About the New Vizplex(TM) Imaging Film

In addition to dramatically faster update speed, the Vizplex generation of active matrix products offers improved image quality.

The following table highlights the improvements with Vizplex:

--------------------------------Previous Generation Vizplex
--------------------------------Imaging Film----------Imaging Film
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Typical Switch Speed------------1200ms----------------740ms
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Peak Switch Speed (monochrome)--500ms----------------260ms
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Brightness (typical reflectance)-32-35%---------------40%
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Supported Grayscale Levels-------4 levels (2-bit)----8 levels (3-bit)
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E Ink also announced today the expansion of its team with three new executives. "E Ink Corporation Expands Team with New Board Director, Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Product Development" is available on the company's Web site: www.eink.com.