It has been report by Tech-on news website that Toppan Printing and E Ink have produced the world's largest full-colour, flexible "e-paper" display panel that can be adapted to curved surfaces.
The companies plan to market the 32-inch e-paper - featuring very low power consumption, light weight and paper-like readability - by the end of 2017, after further work on refining the mass production technology, the company said.
The largest full-color, flexible e-paper previously was about 14 inches.
The flexibility of the 0.4mm thin screen - composed of a plastic panel made by E Ink and layered with Toppan's colour filter on top - makes it possible to apply it to curved surfaces, such as a cylindrical shape such as a column.
Plastic panels give flexibility to e-paper but easily shrink or expand as temperatures change. This presents a production challenge in ensuring a uniform image quality across a large area, as it is difficult to form an even colour filter layer.
Toppan is reported to have not only overcame the issue of thermal expansion with its new filter technology, but also succeeded in creating more vivid, bright colors than its previous technology could.
E-paper has typically been used in price displays on store shelves and electronic book screens, but the companies are contemplating new applications for the product, to be priced at several hundred thousand yen (several thousand dollars).
The companies are contemplating, for example, a public disaster information board that can run for an extended period on auxiliary power sources such as dry batteries or solar cells.
They are also seeking to devise new applications for the financial industry and for traffic control.