Dynamically-tuneable metamaterials for self-powered E-paper

Today, emissive displays (LCD, LED, OLED, etc.) have revolutionized how we communicate information, but at the cost of significant and rapidly increasing energy consumption.

Electronic paper (E-paper) displays utilize the light source from the environment without emitting any light at all, consuming much less energy. However, the current commercial electronic paper can only display monochrome texts or images without supporting videos.

Moreover, all existing E-paper still needs a power source or charge.This project focuses on energy-efficient and dynamically-tunable metamaterials for E-paper display technology.

The WO3 metamaterial E-paper proposed here can provide color and video display with an extra-low operation voltage (1.5 V). WO3 has color memory ability, which can significantly decrease energy consumption and allow solar cells to self-power.

Its energy consumption (0.1 mW cm-2) will be only 2.4% of current state-of-the-art E-paper technology (EPD), thus enabling it to be fully powered by solar cells (15 mW cm-2), like a pocket calculator.

Furthermore, the basic operational principle of our proposed E-paper would yield ultra-high resolution (~1 µm), large optical contrast (~80%), wide gamut coverage (better than printed colors), and use only abundant materials, etc.

Additionally, the project will embark on a new direction using a similar methodology, assembling chromic meta-building blocks (“meta-atoms”) into intelligent microparticle applications.