IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - 40

The Do-ITAll
DIsplAy
Can oil droplets Cure

There's oil in Them Thar displays:
electrowetting displays use a bead
of oil as a shutter to turn pixels on and
off. Because they don't need polarizing
filters, they are much more efficient
than lCds, both in color [far left]
and monochrome.

display dismay?

By Glenn Zorpette

looking at electronic displays than at anything else, including your spouse's face.
Yet though they dominate our lives and
bring their manufacturers billions of dollars in revenue, displays are still pretty lousy,
especially in mobile applications.
Liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) are heavy
power hogs and practically useless in daylight. E-paper displays, which dominate
e-readers, are light, readable even in direct
sunlight, and parsimonious with power,
but they can't display colors or change fast
enough to handle video.
A display that combines the best features
of LCDs and e-ink has long been a major goal
[see "Lite, Brite Displays," IEEE Spectrum,
March 2010]. This year, one of the best and
40

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JAN 2013

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North AmericAN

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brightest of the dozen or so contenders
should finally make its commercial debut.
It's based on electrowetting, a trick that
uses an applied voltage to alter the "wetness"
of a surface, making a film of oil either spread
out or bead up. If the oil is opaque, it'll act
as a shutter to turn a pixel on or off in a tiny
fraction of a second.
The Korean technology colossus Samsung
will be the first to market a display based on
electrowetting, having acquired the technology when it bought Liquavista, a Philips
spin-off, in 2010. A similar approach is also being pursued by Gamma Dynamics, a start-up
in Cincinnati that's commercializing technology developed at the University of Cincinnati.
It is in demanding mobile applications that
the display's diverse strengths will be most

SPectrUm.ieee.orG

apparent. With electrowetting, the same display could go from beach to bedroom, and it
could handle books, magazines, videos, and
Web-surfing in vivid color-all while economizing greatly on battery power. Further in
the future, electrowetting might even deliver
the long-sought "roll-up" display, a bauble in
recent sci-fi films, which could roll or fold an
iPad-size display into an iPhone-size housing.
Johan Feenstra flips a switch on a big

light box and a half dozen experimental
electrowetting displays come to brilliant,
riotously colorful Continued on page 64

samsung (2)

ChanCes are you spend far more time



http://SPectrUm.ieee.orG

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum January, 2013

IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - Cover1
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - Cover2
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - 1
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - 2
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - 3
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IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - 79
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - 80
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - Cover3
IEEE Spectrum January, 2013 - Cover4
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