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from the solution-looking-for-a-problem dept.
Yadong Yin [...] and his colleagues at the University of California at Riverside have invented a type of paper that can be printed on using just light, erased by heating, and reused up to 80 times.
Yin created nanoparticles, which are a million times smaller than the thickness of human hair, with the dye Prussian blue, or its chemical analogues, and titanium oxide, which is commonly used in white wall paint. This mixture is then applied to normal paper.
When the coating is exposed to ultraviolet light, electrons from titanium oxide move to the dye in the nanoparticle. This addition of electrons makes the blue dye turn white. Focusing the ultraviolet light into shapes, you can print white words on a blue background—or blue words on a white background, which are easier to read.
If left alone, the paper reverts to its original state in five days. That process can be accelerated by heating the paper to 120 °C (250 °F) for 10 minutes.
(Score: 2) by Bogsnoticus on Monday February 06 2017, @05:56AM
Xerox have had self-cleaning paper for a while, but both that, and this version do not address the real issue.
That is, as soon as it comes out of the printer, it starts to get wrinkled, folded, crumpled, dog-eared, and just generally fucked up to the point it cannot be re-fed into the printer for another run through.
As soon as they develop self-repairing paper, then, and only then, will self-cleaning paper be useful.
Genius by birth. Evil by choice.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday February 06 2017, @08:47PM
In a laser printer, the paper has to be in intimate contact with a photosensitive drum. In an ink jet printer, the printing head is very close to the paper. This process uses light to form the image; the light source could be some distance from the paper, so irregularities might be less of a problem.