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Displays Science

Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs 175

Posted by Zonk from the i'm-made-of-liquid-metal dept.
InvisblePinkUnicorn writes "NewScientist reports on a color-changing liquid that could cheaply replace the color components of standard LCDs. According to researchers at UC Riverside, the liquid 'contains tiny iron oxide particles coated with plastic. It is cheap and easy to make, and could also be used in flexible, rewritable, electronic paper.' From the article: 'The opposing forces of electrostatic repulsion [in the plastic] and magnetic attraction [in the iron oxide] result in the particles arranging themselves into an ordered structure, known as a colloidal "photonic crystal". The colloidal crystal reflects light because the spacing between neighboring particles in the structure is equivalent to the wavelength of light. Also, tuning the spacing slightly alters the exact wavelength, or colour, of light that is reflected. This can easily be done by varying the strength of the magnetic field applied to the crystal.'"
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Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs More

Chameleon Liquid Could Replace LCDs

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  • Liquid Paper already exists.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by EveryNickIsTaken ( 1054794 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:30AM (#19887985)
    And it's called white-out, duh!

    • Re:Liquid Paper already exists.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by ringfinger ( 629332 ) * on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:45AM (#19888221) Homepage
      Dude -- You should clean the white out off your computer monitor - then you might be able to actually READ THE ARTICLE...

    • Re:Liquid Paper already exists.. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Ohreally_factor ( 593551 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @12:19PM (#19888745) Journal
      I didn't RTFA. I assumed that they were talking about actual chameleon liquid. I was thinking all those "Will It Blend?" experiments had finally paid off.
    • I think you are thinking of "Wite-Out" [wikipedia.org].

      A whiteout is a severe snow condition.
      A brownout is a power fluctuation.
      And a blackout is what the corporate lawyers give you for generalizing their trademarked terms.
    • I remember reading an article about flexible displays that were supposed to replace LCDs someday, and this was probably over 5 years ago. It was made using little polymer dots sprayed onto a sheet of some sort of material using something similar to an inkjet printer head. It was supposed to be super cheap and flexible. I'm not excited about any new until I see a working prototype... In the meantime, LCDs have come down significantly in price and has increased significantly in quality, so now it's really har
      • Well, there are four things the media latches onto when touting the next 'LCD killer':

        Faster response time
        Light-emission (rather than masking - better efficiencies)
        Lower cost
        Physical flexibility

        Until I see a product with *all four* of these features, I predict LCD will remain the mainstay of thin displays.

      • It was supposed to be super cheap and flexible. I'm not excited about any new until I see a working prototype... In the meantime, LCDs have come down significantly in price and has increased significantly in quality, so now it's really hard to bring anything new into the market to compete with LCDs.
        Screw that. I'm not going to be impressed till I see it in walmart.

  • Response time? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MSTCrow5429 ( 642744 )
    What would the response time be for these iron-oxide particle coated with plastic goop be? Anything over 6 or 8ms would be a problem for anything but static displays.

    • Re:Response time? (Score:4, Informative)

      by SilentUrbanFox ( 689585 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:37AM (#19888081) Homepage
      Um, it's only fairly recently-ish we've had sub-6ms LCDs... it's funny you mention 8 ms because 8 ms is widely considered the "acceptable" gaming threshold, at least in my research when I was looking at buying an LCD a year ago or so. (Note: I held off until a couple months back, and my current display is 2 ms latency.) Not to mention, the panels on older laptop computers had significantly higher latency, and they were quite usable for basic office tasks.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
        I wonder if you realize that CRTs have a fade-out effect. Try swapping a pixel from full on to full off [any of the colours] and see what the observed waveform looks like. Hint: It's not square.

        As opposed to an LCD which truly is at a given level, there is no fade out.

        Sure your CRT may refresh at 200Hz but the phosphor coating doesn't.

        Tom

        • Re:Response time? (Score:4, Informative)

          by profplump ( 309017 ) <zach-slashjunk@kotlarek.com> on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @01:04PM (#19889455)
          You're right that the change isn't instantaneous on a CRT, but the maximum refresh rate of a CRT is very much related to the decay rate of the phosphors, at least after you adjust for the marketing lies. That's why fixed-frequency 60 Hz monitors (or TVs) don't have huge flicker problems, but a multi-sync monitor with a 180 Hz maximum refresh will put you into seizures if run with a 60 Hz refresh.

        • Re:Response time? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by SnowZero ( 92219 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @01:10PM (#19889553)

          As opposed to an LCD which truly is at a given level, there is no fade out.
          Wrong. Go to Tom's hardware and look at any of their LCD reviews. The response curve is not square, nor is it likely to be anywhere near the quoted speed, which is usually describing the best case rather than the worst case. You're also neglecting the common "overdrive" method used to get sub "16ms" response times, which means the LCD takes a long time to actually converge on a level; Contrary to your claim, for video it really is almost never is at the right level, rather it wobbles around it and looks grainy. So, CRTs are still better at response time (in particular rise time) and flatness of a shade, but suck for all the other reasons that CRTs do (size, weight, flicker, etc). It's a trade-off, please don't try to pretend it isn't.

          If you want a good waveform, you'll need an OLED. Those can respond in a few ms from/to any brightness level (just like an LED). Once those take off in popularity, they will probably rule the roost for gaming and video, if not everything.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by eggnoglatte ( 1047660 )
          Sorry, you are wrong on two counts:

          a) modern LCD panels do not have a square pulse. In order to achieve fast switching times, the frame-to-frame differences are actually overdriven. Say you are currently at pixel value 100, and want to go to 150. You would actually drive the pixel at 170 or so, such that at the end of the new frame, the time-averaged transmission over the frame interval is the desired 150. The numbers are made up of course, but the principle holds.

          b) CRT phosphors have a non-zero decay peri
          • b) is misleading though. Sure there is a "brightest spot" but the other cells are still active. Try turning off a warm tv in a pitch black room, you can see the light [albeit unfocused] for at least a minute or so.

        • Try swapping a pixel from full on to full off [any of the colours] and see what the observed waveform looks like. Hint: It's not square.

          There is a switch time (called rise and fall time) associated with turning an LCD pixel from full bright to full black. I saw an article that did some real world tests on LDC monitors to compare the rated response time to measured response times and typically the rated was half of the actual (some times much less than half). E.g. monitors rated at 10 milliseconds were a

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MontyApollo ( 849862 )
      Slow response time would be fine for websurfing, photo albums, PIMs, etc. The display could be used for certain PDA's, smart phones, electronic books/newspapers, etc... I think it still would be cool.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by TubeSteak ( 669689 )

        The display could be used for certain PDA's, smart phones, electronic books/newspapers, etc
        Wouldn't the whole 'susceptible to magnetic intereference' be a problem for a portable screen?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by MontyApollo ( 849862 )
          Maybe...

          It just depends on how susceptible. Weren't floppy disks susceptible to being erased by magnetic interference, but people rarely took special precautions.
        • I'd've thought that producing magnetic interference would be the bigger worry. Certainly not allowed on planes or in hospitals, if they want to keep an air of consistency about them.

      • Slow response time would be fine for websurfing, photo albums, PIMs, etc.

        Not really. It results in disappearance of the mouse cursor, and interferes with scrolling.

        That said, general purpose reflective displays (rather than today's emissive displays) would be a revolution in most electronics applications. No longer would dim lighting be necessary. The story mentions billboards, which is overlooking the obvious - home TV sets and home theater. Since movies were invented they've been associated with

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by MontyApollo ( 849862 )
          >>Not really. It results in disappearance of the mouse cursor, and interferes with scrolling.

          I guess it depend too on what you mean by "slow" response time. The OP in not so many words said it had to be fast enough to play video games without ghosting. Most applications are not that demanding.

          If it was too slow you could not use a mouse or scroll, but their could be workarounds (page up and down instead of scroll, moveable focus rather than a moveable cursor).
    • 8ms correspods to roughly 125 images per second.

      Seriously, people are absolutely insane about refresh rates where it really doesn't matter. For CRTs a high refresh rate is important because you get flickering without it, but if your light output remains fixed between frames ( as would appear to be the case with these displays ) it really doesn't matter once you are above a fairly small threshold ( video tapes use about 24fps iirc )

      In comparison, in a cinema your projector may emit some 72 pulses of light ea
      • Just to repeat what others have said, a TV has a refresh rate of 60Hz but doesn't flicker - the flickering is caused in multi-sync monitors because the phosphors decay too quickly at the lower refresh rates. Slow phosphors eradicate flickering at slow refresh rates - my monitor isn't too bad at 60Hz, since its maximum rate is only 80.

        The problem with (most) LCDs is that the image only changes at the point of moving to the next frame. This means that persistence of vision causes two frames to be visible, un

  • lets get to it (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:31AM (#19888003)
    I'm tired of these new technologies that never make it out to the customer. Stop telling me what we could do, and do it already!

    • Re:lets get to it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:37AM (#19888075)
      The ones that 'never make it out' are the ones that are tragically flawed and you don't want, anyhow. Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.

      On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.

      • Re:lets get to it (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Glith ( 7368 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:48AM (#19888261)
        Of course we do. New, practical ideas don't come into existence without brainstorming through plenty of new, impractical ideas.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by daskinil ( 991205 )
        I agree, its not that these technologies never come out either, but the upstream technologies and research often take 6-10 years to be engineered into products. So the consumer doesn't see technology thats developed today until 2015 or so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by suggsjc ( 726146 )
          Yeah, but too bad it only takes a couple of years of lawsuits or a couple million to buyout the technologies just to keep them from hitting the market and displacing "traditional" technologies.

          I know if happens (probably a lot more than we even know about), but this is /. and all existing big corporations are evil, right?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.

        Like maybe this guy [youtube.com], who's desperately trying to come up with perpetual motion machine made of magnets?

        Some geeks maybe value any new idea with a catchy news title "X will replace Y!!". But geeks worth their salt prefer actual facts that matter (check site slogan), and which aren't misleading.

        First of all, this is not t

        • And in that perspective, what do you know, e-paper is already cheap to make. So in the end we have just another way to make e-paper. Of course great, given patents and all, licensing, diversity on the e-paper market, competition... but.. actually nothing that matters to the average geek.

          Says you. epaper currently only does grayscale. This can do full color. That makes it very interesting.

          And epaper isn't all that cheap.

      • Re:lets get to it (Score:4, Funny)

        by object88 ( 568048 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @12:37PM (#19889027)
        Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc.

        I hate it when my new technology crosses that painful threshold between "slightly impossible" and "too impossible".
      • Ah, yes, the lesser-known Asbestos slogan.

        Asbestos: Because it wasn't too cancer-causing ...
      • a) I don't see how this could possibly be cheaper than LCDs (and unless it is there's no point).

        b) There's this tiny problem of having individual tunable magnets for every single pixel.

        c) There's also the problem that the magnetic field of one pixel isn't allowed to influence adjacent pixels - unlikely at any decent screen resolution.

        etc.

      • The ones that 'never make it out' are the ones that are tragically flawed and you don't want, anyhow. Too expensive, too cancer-causing, too impossible, etc. On the other hand, if you don't want to know the cutting-edge tech that -might- come out soon, you are probably on the wrong site. Geeks tend to value new ideas, even if they are impractical.
        Liquid LCD's impractical? But imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!

    • Re:lets get to it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by catbutt ( 469582 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @12:14PM (#19888657)
      Have you considered not reading technology sites and just going to the mall, if all you are interested in is finished products?
    • You just have too short an attention span. When you first hear about a new technology like this being demo'd it can easily be a decade or more away from the consumer market. Development takes time. Not everything makes it, and generally what doesn't, doesn't for a reason (because it isn't workable) however many do and you simply don't notice it because it takes a long time. Go look at a timeline of LCD display development sometime. It has been a long, long process with many incremental improvements to get t

  • Magnets (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hack slash ( 1064002 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:35AM (#19888063)
    I remember having fun with powerful magnets and CRTs, does this mean LCD panels made with this new liquid be susceptible to magnetic fields too?
  • Huh, polystyrene coated iron oxide? Did they just re-invent toner?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by IBBoard ( 1128019 )
      No, they just invented the entirely new "toner in liquid". There's no prior art and the patent is coming soon.

  • brown and other hues (Score:3, Informative)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:39AM (#19888113) Journal
    the tags are right. The brown color is not in the hue (compare with rainbow), so controlling the wavelength is not enough. You'd need to controll brightness at least, and then brown would be kind-of dark-orange.

    Also, if you rely on reflecting light (aka. mirror), you rely on fact that the light source HAS this color wavelength in its spectrum. This is not always the case if you don't use sunlight.
    • One could always front-light the screen. Perhaps this is funded by Phillips or GE to sell more of the natural-light light bulbs.
    • this gave me another idea - it may turn out, that the best usage of those displays is to use them as handheld spectrometers.
    • I'm pretty sure the designers wanted to stay far away from any further progress towards the Brown Note.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by ajs318 ( 655362 )
      Now, that's an idea! Let's make a display that is physically incapable of reproducing the colour ginger! Then, sufferers will be able to show other people digital photographs of themselves looking normal .....
    • Whereas I don't know a whole lot about the technology involved, I hasten to point out that actual chameleons have no trouble with brown, and that if this is a purely reflective surface, just putting little gaps in the color and providing a black background may be enough.

  • Probably not. Too many electromagnets (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:49AM (#19888271) Homepage

    It sounds cute, but it's another minor advance in materials science, and a long way from being a new display technology.

    The basic problem is that it requires a big array of electromagnets, one per pixel. Fabricating large arrays of electromagnets is expensive; it's hard to fabricate coils using an IC process. And it doesn't scale down well; tiny coils are tough to make. It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space. So electrostatic devices, like LCDs, and emission devices, like plasma panels, tend to win out.

    Previous technologies shot down by this fact include magnetic bubble and magnetic core memories. They worked, but they never got either cheap or tiny.

    • Re:Probably not. Too many electromagnets (Score:4, Informative)

      by mosb1000 ( 710161 ) <mosb1000@mac.com> on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @12:50PM (#19889239)
      Any electrical current will generate a magnetic field. I don't know why you think you need coils. Coils are used because the field overlaps on itself and there is an additive effect. But the article does not say how strong the field has to be, so there's no reason to believe that it will be necessary to use coils. It all depends on how strong the magnetic field needs to be.

      "It's also hard to contain a magnetic field in a small space"

      There is no need to "contain" the magnetic field, since each pixel would be dominated the nearest magnet (magnetic fields dissipate rapidly with distance).
    • An application for nanotubes maybe? (IANAP)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Judebert ( 147131 )
      On the other hand, both hard drives and electromagnetic tape use tiny magnetic fields. So making this work is just a matter of coating the back with the same material we use for hard drives and setting the bits with a moving head (instead of a moving platter).

      While that may not be practical (moving head, what am I thinking?), I did RTFA. The effect is caused by the opposing static and magnetic forces. So, if we can electrostatically increase the static charge on the particles, like we do in an LCD screen
    • Certainly has a plethora of "design" uses if not many "functional" uses.

      Check out the picture: The liquid in a magnetic field [ucr.edu]

      And those of you with Interscience acccess here's the pdf [wiley.com]

      A neat aspect of this is it simply reflects light. It's not a light source. I could see a pool in Vegas using a derivative of this (albeit with a NO PACEMAKER SIGN on it) to make a multi-color pool. Or imagine what the Cirque du Soleil engineers could do with this.

      I agree those, in terms of LCD replacement we'd really have to se

  • Color changes with viewing angle? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:49AM (#19888291)
    The variation in color around the tubes shown in the photos seem to suggest that the color is angle-dependent (not surprising given the photonic crystal design). One would see a redder (longer-wavelength) when viewing straight on to the panel than from any angle to the side. This is NOT acceptable for most applications.

    I do hope they can create angle-independence -- perhaps microlenses or shaping of the cell well would help in some way.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, I think it's because the field strength varies across the tube. They just put magnets behind the tubes (you can see one of them) -- not very precise or high-tech, but it shows how simple the technology is, which is a good sign IMO.

    • The variation in color around the tubes shown in the photos seem to suggest that the color is angle-dependent

      1. Exactly. The color would be angle-dependent unless they take steps to prevent this. BTW but you have the color-change backwards - it should be bluest from straight ahead.
      2. I would get around this by illuminating the screen by a laser, from exactly behind, and then putting a sheet of frosted glass in front of the colored liquid. You would then see the image on the glass and not the liquid.
      3. For the m
  • is that they aren't susceptible to magnetic interference. With modern day TV rooms, this is essential. Even though everyone claims they have "magnetically shielded" speakers, put a few big ones close to a CRT, then tell me whether or not they are truly "magnetically shielded."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanbd ( 210358 )

      They might well be shielded; shielded doesn't mean perfect. I'd bet they're a lot better than non-shielded speakers.

      If you cared, you could add your own shielding. Get some mu-metal foil, and put it between the speaker and the CRT. The exact positioning may be finicky; play with it till it seems best. You'll want to open up the speaker housing and put the foil close to the magnet, if only so you don't need as much foil -- it's kinda pricey. Also, be careful working with it -- edges can be sharp. A c

  • photonic crystals ? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Arthur B. ( 806360 ) on Tuesday July 17, 2007 @11:57AM (#19888423)
    For Aiur !

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by john83 ( 923470 )
      Photonic crystals [wikipedia.org] is a respectable field of research, though it's still fairly theoretical. Am I the only one who isn't at all impressed when some piece of actual technology sounds like some made up thing from some fantasy novel or elderly sci-fi series?
      • Am I the only one who isn't at all impressed when some piece of actual technology sounds like some made up thing from some fantasy novel or elderly sci-fi series?

        This is from a video game which is something completely different.
         
        /me imagines an elderly James Tiberius Kirk using a walker with built in phasers.....
        or was that last weeks episode of Boston Legal?
  • Sounds like a nice idea, but I wonder the following things:

    1. How's the refresh rate? If it doesn't have to constantly refresh, how fast CAN the entire image be changed?
    2. What's the energy cost to change the whole image, for a given size surface? Worst case/best case? Partial image change cost?
    3. Can I get random access to setting a single pixel without having to recalculate & resend the entire image?
    4. What are the predicted cost of materials/cost of manufacture? What sizes could be produced f
  • My chemistry is a bit rusty.

    On the other hand, since the method appears to rely on physically moving the particles to adjust to different wavelengths of light, there is an inherent lag time. It would be great for slow-moving but not permanent displays like billboards, airport schedules, and clocks.

    But what about using it for an input device? If you had a pen that could generate electromagnetic force at a variable frequency ... hmmm, not sure how that would work. Still as a simple monochrome writing table

    • since the method appears to rely on physically moving the particles to adjust to different wavelengths of light, there is an inherent lag time. It would be great for slow-moving but not permanent displays like billboards, airport schedules, and clocks.

      The speed of chemistry is far faster than human conception of time. Typical enzymes can act hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of times per second, and that's an active process involving multiple-trigger deformation of a molecule. The distance these

  • This technology is still a long way off. As you can see from this picture [newscientisttech.com], where a magnet is held to the right, causing the substance to change from brown to blue, the resolution and control still isn't very good. If this works though, suddenly we will have much more brilliantly colorful displays, with every color available. Imagine fluorescent orange on your display.....and, since it works by reflection, putting it in bright daylight will only make it more brilliant.
    Also, they are talking about using

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by owlstead ( 636356 )
      "the resolution and control still isn't very good"

      Looks like a glass vial to me. With a single magnet in the middle. So, yeah, resolution seems to be 1:1 and they are showing off all the colors in the vial, not trying to make it a single color. And I *do* see most colors you would need, so that's a plus.

      As for liquid paper: it can be made flexible, I suppose it uses little energy and it uses reflexion as well. Couple this with high dpi and this would qualify it for digital paper in my view. Actually, for me
  • The basic mechanism for reflecting different colors is the same as used in "Zubbles", the yet to be released colored bubbles. The stucture dictates which color is reflected. Popular Science did a long article on the guy who went with this approach when trying to create colored bubbles for kids that didn't stain when popped:

    http://www.popsci.com/popsci/science/0a03b5108e097 010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html [popsci.com]

    Both use the same mechanism butterfly wings or an oil slick on water to reflect different light wavel
  • I wouldn't be able to play my video games in the dark with this.
    • If this came out, you would buy one. The improvement in color would completely make up for the lack of darkness. Right now, we have all gotten used to the RGB displays we have now, so we don't even notice how pathetic our monitors are when it comes to color. Sometime, try taking a picture of a sunset, then come in immediately and put it on your computer so you can compare the two. The difference is literally just night and day (have you ever noticed that when people say "no pun intended" it is usually

  • So cool (Score:2)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    This is cooler than the iPhone. I'm a bit sceptical about making this into a flexible screen (how do you make a magnetic field in a thin screen?), but this is the first real commercial application of three dimensional photonic crystals that I have ever seen. I wonder if it's really fast enough for LCD screens that you can play FPS games on.
  • Other people have suggested potentially more practical electostatic interferometric displays, like this one [spie.org]. The advantages of this technology, like the classic electrostatic e-paper with the microscopic dual-color beads in oil, is that it doesn't require any power to maintain the display.

    Even so, this technology has been around for ten years, and is still in the very early research stages.

    Thad Beier

  • a car or even clothes covered with this stuff. You could just change their colour at will with the touch of a button.
  • Another issue with this, which has yet to be addressed, is that the pixels in this display aren't made up of RGB subpixels. This means that when color is processed by the computer, it needs to be transmitted as a color, rather than shades of RGB. Should this technology come to market, it seems that it would be too impractical to take an RGB signal from the computer, analyze it, convert it to a color, and then display it. It would require an entirely new video driver (possibly new graphics hardware) to ou

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by n dot l ( 1099033 )

      would require an entirely new video driver (possibly new graphics hardware) to output a "color" signal, rather than an RGB signal

      Nah. Converting RGB to HSV or other color spaces is fairly straight-forward and can easily be done in real-time at 60 Hz. I have no idea how cheap a chip that can do that is - but it can be done right in the monitor.

      This way, you have a color and a brightness, everything you need for a pixel.

      Not exactly. Adding white LEDs whould give you color and saturation, which isn't the same as brightness. Turning up the white light would just wash out the colors (which is an ability you'd want - just not for the reason you gave). What you need is control over how much colored light gets refl

    • The conversion is actually fairly simple, and it certainly wouldn't be a huge issue to stick a small chip in the display converting from RGB to whatever this display wants. Heck, modern displays screw around with the colour balance already. Most of them let you change the colour "temperature" as an example.
  • the liquid 'contains tiny iron oxide particles coated with plastic

    In the printer world we call that toner.
  • Even if the refresh rate isn't high enough for video (I didn't RTFA) it would be perfect for low-cost, huge picture frames and even computerized wallpaper, etc.

    I can already see things like "Star Trek wallpaper" being available on torrents, makes your walls appear like the NCC-1701D (or whatever the number was), or maybe you feel paranoid, then put Aliens wallpaper up, etc...
  • We've heard the same before about variable mechanical photonic lattices such as the Qualcomm's iridescent Interferometric Modulator (IMOD) [qualcomm.com] technology and the research done on photonic crystal gel [electronicproducts.com] at the University of Toronto in 2003.

    I don't think it will challenge TV-sized media applications anytime soon due to the infrastructure and backplane developement that still needs to be done. On the small scale it would have to compete with electrowetting and e-ink based displays. This technology may provide a ve

  • My friend had a car painted with this stuff in the '90s. Get with it "New" Scientist!

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