GoodDisplay and Display Electronic Slurry

[pdurrant]

There seems to be a new Eink-type display launching/about to launch. There are a couple of small companies (Topjoy and Reinkstone) saying that they're going to launch colour ereaders with these new displays.

GoodDisplay's new DES (Display Electonic Slurry) looks rather interesting. Like the original E-Ink it uses charged coloured (usually black) particles to form the display. Unlike E-ink, the cells containing the particles are aligned to the pixel electrodes, giving a sharper edge to the pixels. There's a PDF about the technology on their website which has a close-up comparison:


There also a rather poorly done slide in the PDF that suggests the B&W contrast ration of DES is 1:45. I can't find contrast figures for the latest E-Ink Carta 1200 display.

It looks interesting. If the claims of higher contrast and faster response times hold up. I look forward to hearing what they're like in real life when devices eventually ship.

[Quoth]

Inherently only good for monochrome. Adding an R G B filter to have colour may be a little better than current filtered eink, but physics and mathematics prove it will still be rubbish without a lot of front lighting.

We'll have a better idea of it when someone releases a 300 dpi mono reader using DES. It may be just a ploy to get round patents and not much different. There is nothing wrong with the sharpness of a PW3, Oasis, Kobo Libra or the 7.8" 300 dpi models.

[j.p.s]

No color filters, the charged particles are colored. Maximum color saturation probably won't be great, but should still be better than the recent color e-ink improvements.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

No color filters, the charged particles are colored. Maximum color saturation probably won't be great, but should still be better than the recent color e-ink improvements.

The problem is that R G B by reflectance on one layer is inherently about 1/5th at best of brightness of C Y M via layers with transmissive. Which is why early R G B photographs using coloured starch was obsoleted once the C Y M method plus reversal was obtained, first with slides and later non-reversed C Y M negatives printing to C Y M paper. R G B is only ever viable for light sources (CRT, Plasma, VFD, Electroluminescent, LCD with a strong backlight, OLED/AMLED and true R G & B LEDs, DLP projection with bright light source) all of which are active displays constantly refreshed, though it means they do video and animation easily).

Also ANY bistable particle display has very limited levels, does the Electronic slurry do much different to black, white and about 14 in-between levels? That's about 4,000 shades/hues total. Compared to 200,000 to 16 M approximately with active displays.

There are bi-colour eink using coloured particles. Usually colour or white in the cell. For "full colour" you need colour + black. It will hardly be better than an colour colour filter.

Are you sure the pigmented panels are not just one colour instead of black? I saw example retail label displays in the PDF. Only colour plus white and black.

[j.p.s]

I think the existing color e-ink panels only have a single color. What's new here is every adjacent pixel is a different color (, unless I am mistaken, as I am not certain of anything regarding this).

[pdurrant]

I believe they do the 'full colour' panels by putting a colour filter in front of the B&W display, like other suppliers.

Colour resolution is quoted at 150ppi, while B&W is 300ppi

[j.p.s]

So I guess any contrast and saturation gains come from improved fill factor, which certainly had a lot of room for improvement.