Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic
Is the Readius durable?
Polymer Vision is the display company; the Readius is our first commercial device. The display the Readius uses today is the same we’ve been doing extensive tests on; these tests were according to standards in the mobile market.
To demonstrate its mechanical lifetime, we have machines that constantly roll the display in and out. We’ve rolled it over 25,000 times without a sign of degradation.
If I kept folding a material, I’d think that eventually it should show a folding joint.
You are right, you would imagine that. If a material is bent too far it will not return to its original shape. But by fixing the roll radius of the display in the Readius (to 7.5mm) we avoid this problem. In all the roll tests we did, folding joints never appeared.
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Based on failure modes in the iLiad display what I'd be dubious about in terms of durability in the Readius display would be:
Electrodes
I'd personally be worried about the electrode material breaking down due to extra mechanical stress from the rolling. We've all seen pictures of E Ink panels that experienced electrode failure on static flat displays.
I'd also be curious about the impact upon the electrode material of rolling the display during a refresh (the oops got a phone call use case) when the electrodes have the voltages running through them. Especially since the panel has a PPI of 254. The electrodes are even smaller and more tightly spaced than in a conventional statically mounted panel.
E Ink tattoo
The other failure mode we've seen with E Ink's panels is ink tattoo, where the ink moves into a non-electrophoretically reachable area and essentially tattoo's the panel. As the sandwich that is the E Ink film is rolled what keeps the ink capsules from being gradually pushed beyond the reach of the electrode's EMF, especially when they've been driven to full black? Doesn't the panel gradually lose contrast as it is rolled? Especially at 104F?
And again, the high PPI works against the tattoo issue: smaller electrodes mean a smaller capture area to manipulate the ink capsules within making it easier for them to slip away.