A paper loaded with electronic images? We've seen it in SF movies, but now it looks like technology is catching up with the script writers, the latest example being that of the Japanese company Fujitsu, that has developed a technology for manufacturing a brand of electronic paper that can preserve images in vivid color and without distortion even when they are folded or bent.

You might wonder how such a thing is possible. In fact, we're not talking about actual paper, but about a LCD display that has a three layered structure in total about 0.8 mm thick. Each layer consists of two 0.125 mm-thick films sandwiching liquid crystal. Cholesteric crystals in each layer are twisted in a certain pitch to reflect only red, green or blue light respectively.

Another great advantage offered by this type of screen is the very low level of power consumption, the display being able to maintain an image without a power supply. Power is only required to change images, making the display energy efficient, and perhaps the best solution for advertising on buildings and vehicles.

Fujitsu said it will keep testing the paper's practical uses with the aim of commercializing it in the fiscal year ending March 2007, but it is very likely that this new technology will be a hit, because, since the display is a simple passive matrix driver, chips are available off-the-shelf, so there are no big factors to push up the cost of the display. For future, wider applications, the team will continue working on enlarging the display and increasing the color gamut.