E Ink's capabilities (and possibilities) continue to grow

May 4, 2011 by Dave Haynes

With LCD technology costs so low and its use so pervasive, the demand for electronic ink in advertising and marketing would seem to be diminished. But it will all come down to cost and capabilities/limitations.

New tests of E Ink, as relayed on Engadget, certainly show some promise for applications where LCDs just won’t be able to function well or survive.

The most intriguing is electronic ink applied to Tyvek, which is Dupont’s non-woven “cloth” – used in everything from wrapping new homes to shipping envelopes.

In this case, there’s a screen applied to an envelop that then gets crumpled and keeps on showing flashing graphics. The E Ink engineers are working on, and showing, full motion video and color.

It’s probably never going to be the case that one technology supplants the other, but if the volumes are there and the costs correspondingly low, you could imagine paper posters being replaced by electronic ink versions – perhaps kept powered via solar.