E INK is the undisputed market leader when it comes to electronic paper. Their technology primarily is found on ebook readers such as the Amazon Kindle, Kobo, Barnes and Noble Nook. They also power the entire digital note taking space, which allows people to freehand draw and annotate PDF files, examples include the Fujitsu Quaderno, Supernote, Remarkable and Sony Digital Paper. E INK was not always the juggernaut they are today and at one time, there was a ton of emerging technology that looked really promising. What happened to all of the e-paper displays?

Plastic Logic – Plastic Logic has been around for almost twenty years and they have no commercial success stories, although the company is still developing new products. They raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years and in 2010 they tried to release the Que e-reader, but it was a commercial failure. This was the last hardware they would ever develop themselves and instead pivoted to make panels for other companies. In 2020, they started to target smart wearables and their e-paper was in a handful of products, such as a sailing jacket, Leitners smartwatch, and a credit card. E INK invested $100 million into the company a year ago.

Clearink – Clearink has been in business for 10 years never released a commercially viable product. They experimented with smartwatches, color e-readers. Over the year, they raised money non-stop and were a blackhole of money. They eventually got bought out in 2020 by a series of Chinese investors and disappeared.

Mirasol – Mirasol e-paper technology was conceptualized by electrical engineer Mark Miles, inspired by Blue Morpho butterflies, which reflect light using nanoscale structures on their wings that cause incoming light waves to interfere with one another, reflecting only specific wavelengths, resulting in the appearance of an iridescent, brilliant color. Qualcomm bought his company in 2004 for $170 million and refined the technology over the years. It was supposed to take over the e-reader market and give companies a viable color screen, but only four products were ever released, including the Kyobo Mirasol in South Korea.  Qualcomm tried to pivot into the internet of things and developed the Toq smartwatch and a concept smartphone, but it failed to get any traction.  In 2013 Qualcomm announced that Mirasol would be discontinued, after losing $300 million. They said that they would be open to licensing it, but no products ever materialized.

Liquavista – This technology uses Electrowetting technology is that it is highly scalable as the e-reader and tablet market has gravitated from small screens to displays exceeding 10 inches. From a manufacturing point of view, it is easy for existing LCD plants to incorporate Electrowetting into its process. It is basically the same entire procedure to create the screen, except instead of using Liquid Crystals they use a different fill.  One of the huge benefits of Liquavista technology is that it is flexible, which means it is a much more robust surface. This is much akin to the same type of display that Plastic Logic uses in their new e-reader and there is a famous video online of two guys hitting each other over the head with it and the glass not breaking. It was initially created by Philips R&D and was bought by Samsung in 2011, re-acquired by its founders and then bought by Amazon, but was closed down around three years ago.

Bridgestone e-paper – Bridgestone, best known for making tires, had developed QR-LPD (Quick Response Liquid Powder Display) screen technology that was created through a joint partnership by Bridgestone and Vivitek. This tech was originally created in 2010 and It’s basically a screen and a logic controller system for electronic readers that promotes a low power consumption while displaying 4096 colors. One of the big new factors in this technology is the .08 second page update and supports different types of page refreshes. It can do partial page updates, full page updates, and supports touch screen and stylus interactions. The screen technology can support from 8 inches all the way to 21 inches and does around 4 levels of gray-scale. Like Pixel Qi, the big selling points to clients wanting to employ QR-LPD is the ability to read it in direct sunlight. The company discontinued their e-paper business in 2012.

Dalian Good Display – There is a new kid on the block that might finally be a true competitor of E INK and Kaleido Plus. It is called Display Electronic Slurry E-Paper. It is a new breed of display, which incorporates an electronic slurry module, which adopts a novel display structure which is completely different from the existing micro cup structure and micro capsules. The structure forms a layer of cofferdam on the surface of the TFT by forming a cofferdam around a single pixel electrode. Structure, the cofferdam is covered on the source and gate lines on the TFT. The patterned structure is characterized in that each pixel electrode is surrounded by a cofferdam, the microstructure is not visible on the front side, and the number of layers is reduced, thereby obtaining high definition, High-resolution display, in order to distinguish the traditional micro-cup and micro-capsule technology. There are a few devices that have implemented this new e-paper technology that only came out last year, examples include the Topjoy Butterfly, and Reinkstone R1. One of the advantages of this technology is that the color can be turned off and only B&W will be displayed. I found this screen tech is better than E INK Kaleido Plus.

Pixel QI – Pixel Qi is a company that started right at the cusp of the e-reader revolution. It was started in 2008, one year after the original Kindle was released. The Notion Ink Adam was the first tablet to employ the technology in 2011 and four other tablet companies issued their own products. Pixel Qi has shipped over 3 million displays in over fifteen laptop and tablet models in 2012. They were shipping thousands of tablets every month under the One Laptop Per Child initiative to children in the developing world. As with all things, Pixel QI hit its peak and faded into obscurity. Barely anyone remembers their name and their old domain is run by a SEO content farm.

Binem from Nemoptic – an LCD developed in France that in 2010 combined the low-power, black-and-white display with a full color OLED. That would function as a dual-mode display (a la Pixel Qi), giving you the ability to use the reflective Binem component when you’re outdoors or just looking to save power, and switch to the OLED as needed. What’s more, the Binem display can actually retain an image even when the power is off, which could let you spruce up your e-reader with a favorite image as a persistent wallpaper, for instance.

<strong>Kent Displays – This company developed ChLCD, which is cholesteric (or chiral nematic) liquid crystal phase is typically composed of nematic mesogenic molecules containing a chiral center which produces intermolecular forces that favor alignment between molecules at a slight angle to one another. This leads to the formation of a structure which can be visualized as a stack of very thin 2-D nematic-like layers with the director in each layer twisted with respect to those above and below. In this structure, the directors actually form in a continuous helical pattern about the layer normal. The black arrow in the animation represents director orientation in the succession of layers along the stack. The molecules shown are merely representations of the many chiral nematic mesogens lying in the slabs of infinitesimal thickness with a distribution of orientation around the director. This is not to be confused with the planar arrangement found in smectic mesophases. Their technology is primarily used on the Boogie Board and other products of this type.

SiPix – SiPix epaper displays are created by inserting electrically-charged white particles into a black dielectric fluid within Microcups. When an electric field is applied (when turning pages, making selections, etc), the charged white particles move either to the top or the bottom of the fluid, depending on the polarity of the electric field applied. They were found in products such as the Pandigital Novel, Hanlin A6 and Hanlin A9. Their technology was similar to E INK VISPLEX and Pearl technology, so E INK bought them out in 2012 for $50 million USD.

ZBD bistable LCD technology – The ZBD LCD technology uses standard nematic liquid crystal materials within a passive matrix display. However, one surface is no longer a rubbed polyimide layer but instead is a microscopic diffraction grating. This interacts mechanically with the long-range order in the LC material and allows two different optical states to be obtained without any holding voltage. They haven’t really developed many compelling products since they have been around since 2012. A few digital signage experiments, but that’s it.

E INK – Initial research on E INK technology started at the MIT Media Lab, where the first such patent was filed in 1996. The rights to the technology are currently owned by the Massachusetts-based E Ink Corporation, which was acquired by Taiwanese company Prime View International in 2009. Here is how it works. Tiny microcapsules are suspended in a liquid that is encased within a film layer. The microcapsules, which are roughly the width of a human hair, contain positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles. Applying a negative electrical field causes the white particles to rise to the surface. Conversely, applying a positive electrical field causes the black particles to rise to the surface. By applying different fields at different parts of a screen, e-ink produces a monochromatic text display. E-ink displays are especially popular because of they resemble printed paper. In addition to being easier on the eyes than other display types, e-ink consumes less power, especially when compared to backlit liquid crystal display (LCD) screens.

The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on different types of e-paper. They released VIZPLEX, Pearl, Pearl HD, Carta, Carta HD and Regal Waveform controllers which removed ghosting. They also developed color e-paper such as Triton 1, Triton 2, Kaleido 1 and Kaleido Plus. All of these different screens were on the very first Kindle, all the way to the latest generation. Basically, E INK controls 95% of the e-reader market, and has since expanded into other growth areas such as digital signage, supermarket smart price system, frozen food isle price tags and lots more. They developed a series of tech just for this segment, such as Spectra, ACEP and others. E INK is the largest e-paper company in the world.

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