GOALI: Bi-Primary Electrokinetic Displays - Electronic Paper with Color Performance Approaching Printed Media

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The objective of this NSF GOALI proposal is to pursue a novel color e-Paper through a 3-year collaborative effort between the University of Cincinnati, Hewlett Packard (Corvallis), and EMD/Merck Research Labs (Boston, Southampton). The central hypothesis is that a new bi-primary color system can provide transformative e-paper reflectance (~76%) and color gamut (40%), using an electrokinetic pixel and dual-particle ink dispersions. The academic-industry team has formulated this hypothesis on the basis of preliminary data, and previous collaborative publishing on the state-of-the-art in e-Paper technology. The intellectual merit is three-fold: (1) exploring the fundamental electrophoretic behavior of dual-color, dual-particle ink dispersions, including understanding the effects of poly-dispersity and zeta-potentials for clean particle transport; (2) optically engineering pixels for 2X reflectance and 2X color-fraction of conventional RGBW color-filtering; (3) implementing electrical control by active-matrix addressing and optically characterizing the improved performance as a function of ambient lighting conditions (diffuse, directional, etc..). The broader impacts center on undergraduate students who will be trained as research co-ops at the University of Cincinnati, followed by industry co-op experience at GOALI partner companies. In terms of societal benefit, e-paper is 10X more energy efficient than a typical LCD. Furthermore, e-paper benefits to the individual include improved e-reader ergonomics (less weight, larger screen size, unbreakable plastic display, rollable/foldable form-factor), and enable further immersion of society in the growing sectors of e-publishing and tablet-based learning.