In a partnership with 3M Company that was announced today, Xerox hopes to market the new technology for a wide variety of uses. A gyricon sheet is a thin layer of transparent plastic in which millions of small beads are randomly dispersed. The beads sit in oil filled cavities, where they can rotate freely. Each bead is two toned, with opposite hemispheres carrying different colors, like black and white. They are electrically charged, and respond to an electrical current by rotating to show only one colored side to the viewer.
Bichromal beads are the core of the electronic paper idea.
Each sheet of electronic paper can display any combination of two colors. By applying a pattern of voltages to the surface of a sheet of electronic paper, the viewer can select, bead by bead, which color the paper will display. An image of text or a picture is created by the patterns of colored dots, in the same way that dots of ink create words and images in traditional printing. The image remains stable until the viewer applies a different voltage pattern. Voltage patterns can be applied using devices like printers that create images downloaded from computers, and erase old images.