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At the start of its two-day Fujitsu Forum 2005 in Tokyo on Thursday, Fujitsu Ltd. in conjunction with two of its subsidiaries, Fujitsu Frontech Ltd. and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., showcased its latest invention: a film substrate-based, flexible color e-paper that has the ability to retain images in its memory.
Fujitsu spokesperson Scott Ikeda said this prototype was the result of about five years of research and development.
Fujitsu expects to have the new paper available in commercial products sometime within the companys 2006 fiscal year, which runs from April 2006 to March 2007, he added.
According to Fujitsu, this new e-paper shares characteristics with regular paper, such as being lightweight, thin and bendable.
Unlike conventional paper, however, it can retain an image or a series of images with minimal power consumption, and uses only one-hundredth to one-ten-thousandth of the energy required by conventional display technologies to change a screen image.
The e-paper does not require any power to maintain a given color image.
In addition, the RGB displaying layers used in the paper are not only more vibrant than traditional LCD displays, bending the paper or pressing on it with fingers, for example, neither alters nor distorts the technology embedded within the paper.
Moreover, the paper does not require either color filters or polarizing layers to work.
To showcase these qualities, Ikeda said that the e-papers functionality is being demonstrated at the Fujitsu Forum in two exhibitions.