bistable display

Bistable display technologies are characterized by having two stable states: Light or dark, absorbing or reflecting. The states are maintained without a power supply until they are changed by applying voltage.

Thus, bistable displays retain their charge pattern once input without power supply. E-paper is one such electrophoretic display. However, there are also bistable liquid crystal displays that can retain their charge without and, of course, with energy input. There are also bistable displays that work electromagnetically-mechanically with metal membranes or tilting devices in microsystem technology, such as the Mirasol display, and still others, such as the PNLC display and the MIP display, that work with pixel memories in which the two bistable states are stored.

Bistable LCD displays and e-paper have the disadvantage of limited color capability and relatively high switching times, making them unsuitable for normal displays with constant changes.

One of the first monochromatic bistable displays for e-paper was Gyricon, which was developed back in the 1970s. Later, the EPD display was developed by the I-Ink company, which also developed a bistable color display with the ACeP display, Advanced Color e-Paper (ACeP).