The Gyricon rotating ball display

Abstract

Abstract— The Gyricon display consists of hemispherical black and white (bichromal) balls contained in individual liquid‐filled cavities and disposed to orient in an electrical field. This bistable reflective light display currently has a diffuse reflectance of more than 18% and a contrast ratio of more than 6:1. The viewing angle approaches that of paper. A new method of fabricating the bichromal balls has enabled practical realization of large‐area high‐quality displays.

Synthesis of Monodisperse Bicolored Janus Particles with Electrical Anisotropy Using a Microfluidic Co‐Flow System

“…For example, bicolored spheres for electronic paper are commercially produced by the breakup of two-layered wax jets generated from a spinning disk edge. [7] However, accurate size control is difficult, and the resulting products tend to be polydisperse. Another problem is the poor thermal resistivity of the products; a raw material having a low glass-transition temperature (T g ) is needed to give fluidity by heating for material infusion, and to allow rapid solidification to produce balls in the air.…”

“…Such smaller Janus particles are needed to fabricate displays with high resolution (e.g., 300 dots per inch). [7] The cured polymer matrix has a relatively high T g (∼ 94°C), which offers better heat resistivity than commercially produced bicolored spheres made of wax-like materials. Use of inorganic pigments for coloring gives the synthesized spheres several advantages.…”

“…A display panel was fabricated by a conventional method. [4,7] In the presence of an external electric field, these spheres turned to orient their black hemispheres to the negatively charged panel and vice versa. By reversing the electric field gradient, the particles flipped (Figs.…”

Perspectives for electronic books in the World Wide Web age

“…Up till devices relying on new technologies such as eInk [eInk, 2002], [Comiskey et al, 1997], [Sheridon and Berkovitz, 1997] and ePaper [Gibbs, 1998], [Electronic Paper, 1999] and [D'Amico and Ferranti, 1999] provide at low prices with reading areas comparable in size and rendering quality to those of quality paper prints, device independent Web based documents intended for a professional usage (such as professional journals, technical manuals, directories, or teaching material) or aiming at fulfilling specific nonprofessional needs (such as directories and news servers) are likely to be among the most promising eBook applications.…”

Optofluidic Synthesis of Electroresponsive Photonic Janus Balls with Isotropic Structural Colors

“…[22][23][24][25][26][27] Similarly, liquid-crystal spheres with anisotropic optical properties were prepared by a microfluidic technique for light-induced actuation, but the resulting microspheres did not show distinctive hemispherical domains. [28] Only for Janus particles with black and white colors, produced using a spinning disk [29] or a microfluidic device, [30] was a rotatingball-type actuation carried out, on account of the electrical anisotropy of the microparticle. On the other hand, our strategy -based on colloidal assembly -allows the creation of both structural colors and electrical anisotropy.…”