Fujitsu hails e-paper breakthrough

Fujitsu has been displaying a form of electronic paper at the Fujitsu Forum 2005 show in Japan that can display images without using electricity.

The paper is only 0.8mm thick and is made of red, green and blue reflective strips twisted to reflect colour and then lock in that position, displaying the image without power consumption.

The company claims that the new screens use only 1/100th to 1/10,000th the energy of conventional display technologies.

"A wide variety of applications can be envisioned for Fujitsu's new electronic paper as a digital medium that can be handled like paper," said a company spokesman.

"Transit advertising on trains, information displays on curved surfaces, and other public display applications could take advantage of its light weight and flexibility.

"Information displayed can be updated based on the time of day, enabling more effective advertising and signs."

Monochrome electronic paper which uses a similar system to save power has been around for over a year but this is the first colour application.