Technical, Ecological and Economic Aspects of Electrophoretic Display Applications

Electronic paper (e-paper), an electronic replacement for white paper that attempts to copy its properties as closely as possible, is available since about three decades. Research efforts in this area have created several different technological approaches to the issue, one of its most promising being electrophoretic displays (EPDs). Due to their extraordinary properties, they have the potential to make a major impact both economically and ecologically. This master’s thesis deals with ecological and economic aspects of EPDs along with some technical aspects of electrophoretic display applications. The basic functioning of the displays is discussed, as well as a few of its major implementations and concurrent developments. Among the many possible applications of EPDs, two are readers for electronic newspapers and e-books, which this report deals with in depth. The core of the work is an analysis of the economic and ecological impact of the aforementioned applications. This has been done by • identifying possible improvements in the delivery of books and newspapers • an analysis of the total energy usage of electrophoretic displays (including production, transport, usage and recycling) in comparison to the same analysis of paper • and a discussion of economic issues such as acceptance and usability, copyright and digital rights management, subscription, personalized advertisements and pricing of immaterial content. The major findings of this thesis are that the market for electrophoretic displays will take off and that EPD based e-book readers will appear in the public and even become an important part of our daily lives within a decade from today. The environmental impact of the researched EPD applications depends on the way the data is transferred to the reading devices. In contrast to previous work, the results of this thesis show that these applications will have a smaller accumulated energy consumption than conventional paper. Thus, electrophoretic displays have a potential in bettering the overall ecological situation, especially concerning the environmental impact of reading news.