Erasable Paper
8 October 2008, 18:59
Categories: smart-materials-smt smt-chromism-color-change
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At the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Las Vegas, Steve Hoover, Vice President with Xerox Research Center Webster in New York, showed off a technology being developed in the company’s labs that enables people to reuse a sheet of paper. The paper is both thermochromic and photochromic. UV light can be used to make marks appear on the sheet and sending the marked up sheet through a warm device, such as a photocopier, will cause the marks to disappear.
A separate, collaborative project between the Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.) has produced an erasable paper, wherewith information on the page can disappear over a short period of time. The paper is coated with chemicals that react to light of a specific wavelength. When the paper is exposed to that wavelength, it creates visible text on the page. Within 24 hours, the paper erases itself and can be used again – good news in offices where 40 percent of all printouts are discarded the day they are printed.
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Posted by: The Editors
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