A new biprimary color system is demonstrated for single‐layer reflective displays, capturing much of the improved color performance of multilayer displays while potentially maintaining single‐layer display advantages in high resolution and faster switching. Electrophoretic pixels were operated with dual‐particle complementary‐colored dispersions such as green/magenta (G/M). Using simple interdigitated three‐electrode architecture, four colored states (KWGM) were achieved with a preliminary contrast ratio of 10 : 1. Furthermore, biprimary ink dispersions were shown to be functional in a more advanced electrokinetic pixel structure. A full‐color biprimary pixel contains three complementary subpixels (G/M, B/Y, R/C), and the requisite electrophoretic ink dispersions were also formulated and spectrally characterized in this work. Lastly, theoretical color space mapping confirms that the biprimary concept provides twice the brightness and twice the color fraction compared with the conventional RGBW subpixel approach, and that the biprimary concept can approach performance close to that of magazine print (Specifications for Web‐Offset Print).

Realising bright and vivid full colour performance in electrophoretic displays presents a significant challenge to display architects and material designers. A range of dyed polymeric microparticles with tunable size, charge and colour have been developed. When formulated as colloidal dispersions in low dielectric constant media, the particles are electrophoretically active and are suitable for use in full colour or monochrome electrophoretic displays.

Well-defined, strongly coloured and electrophoretically active poly(methyl methacrylate) microparticles in one-pot, via dispersion polymerisation in supercritical carbon dioxide and dodecane.

Polymeric particle dispersions have numerous potential applications; currently one of the most relevant is their use as inks in electrophoretic displays. These colloidal particles are synthesized from the appropriate monomer using nonaqueous dispersion (NAD) polymerization in a nonpolar solvent, which requires a stabilizer to control particle size and morphology. We have previously reported the facile synthesis of poly(methyl methacrylate)-block-poly(octadecyl acrylate) (PMMA-b-PODA) by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), and its use in the NAD polymerization of MMA in hexane/dodecane solvent mixtures. Here we report the synthesis of monodisperse PMMA particles in dodecane following a standard "industrial" procedure using these PMMA-b-PODA stabilizers. However, it was observed that the particle suspensions solidified when they were left at temperatures below ∼18 °C yet redispersed upon being heated. Differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic light scattering, and rheological studies demonstrated that this thermoresponsive behavior was due to a liquid-gel transition occurring at 17.5 °C as a consequence of the upper critical solution temperature of PODA in dodecane being traversed. Consequently, new copolymers were synthesized by ATRP with an ethylhexyl acrylate (EHA) co-monomer incorporated into the lyophilic (dodecane compatible) block. Dispersions stabilized by these PMMA-b-P(ODA-co-EHA) polymers with high EHA contents exhibited lower gelation temperatures because of the greater solvent compatibility with dodecane. The use of a PMMA65-b-(ODA10-co-EHA45) copolymer stabilizer (with the highest EHA content) gave PMMA dispersions that showed no gelation down to 4 °C and monodisperse cross-linked PMMA particles containing organic dyes (cyan, magenta, red, and black) giving colored particles across the size range of approximately 100-1300 nm.