E Ink

EPD solution provider Netronix announced that it has received major orders for E Ink name badges from a medical testing equipment company in the US, with shipments to start in Q3 2020.

Netronix also reports that interest in its e-Notebook products have increased, while demand for electronic baggage tags is much lower due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is also active with electronic shelf labels, large-area ePaper signage and e-readers (the company will ramp up its 6-inch color E Ink e-readers and name tags in Q3 2020).

Most people when they think about ePaper displays immediate think about E Ink. E Ink Holdings (EIH) has been very successful in bringing its ePaper displays to the market - and today these are prevalent in e-readers, electronic shelf labels, e-notebooks and many other applications. While EIH indeed has a clear leadership in the ePaper market, it is not alone.

But first of all, it is important to note that there are many display technologies that could be called ePaper displays. Most people would only consider truly bi-stable displays able to show dot-matrix images as ePaper displays, but some other technologies that are not truly bi-stable also exist and some consider these as ePaper displays as well - for example Memory LCDs. In addition some simpler displays technologies that are similar to ePaper in properties also exist. We will discuss both these technologies in this article.

This interesting video from IDTechEx's conference shows Toyobo's Xenomax polyimide film, used as substrates for flexible E Ink displays. Toyobo says that its films are used by E Ink in all 13.3" flexible e-paper displays:

Jeremie Rousseau, from France, suffers from a genetic disease called Syndome Triple-A, a rare autosomal recessive congenital disorder. There are several symptoms that result from this disorder - and one of these is alacrima - the inability to produce enough tears. Jeremie finds it very difficult to work with computer monitors - even after following his Doctor's advice to decrease the contrast and brightness of his LCD display.

Jeremie was looking for solutions that will enable him to work for longer times in front of a monitor, and he found a good solution with Dasung's Paperlike E Ink monitors. Jeremie finds that he can work for many hours in front of the E Ink monitors - used to read, write e-mails and read long PDF files.