From
The Star:
"One of things we're working on at XRCC is to move away from silicon," says Mahabadi, whose lab just celebrated its 1,000th patent in 32 years of research. "We want to get to a point where we can produce electronic paper by printing rolls and not by the batch, as we do with silicon."
The idea is that if you can print the circuits onto a roll — as you would paper on a printing press — you can create an economy of scale to produce a product that is flexible, paper-thin and portable. It could also be rolled up, laminated onto walls or fridge door panels, wirelessly re-flashed with updated text and images, and also be cheap enough to be disposable after it had enjoyed a reasonable lifespan — longer than that of newsprint but shorter than the monitor on your PC.
While eBooks are starting to make inroads, they don't have the flexibility of natural paper and are cumbersome. But there are already many projects in play.
"EPaper should look and feel like paper which just erases itself at the touch of a button," says Brug, noting it's a real challenge because natural paper is so cheap and can be recycled.
Mahabadi says Xerox is on the verge of creating small screens, about five inches square, using ink-jet printing technology for a variety of applications.