E-paper retinal: tiny screen used in the pupil promises to put an end to cell phones and monitors

An international team of researchers has created an electronic paper screen so tiny it fits on the retina of the eye. The device has a resolution of 25 thousand pixels per inch, equal to that of human vision.

Imagine sitting in the sun, watching something on a paper-thin digital displaybut with the same image quality as your mobile device or television.

This science fiction scenario is about to become reality, thanks to a study led by researchers at Uppsala University and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, who have created a revolutionary form of “electronic paper” that could change the way we interact with screens.

This retinal electronic paper, or E-paper retinalcapable of displaying realistic color images with pixels smaller than a single human photoreceptor, was featured in a published in the journal Nature.

According to its creators, it is the screen with the smaller pixels ever seen and with the highest possible resolution that the human eye can perceive.

With a resolution greater than 25,000 pixels per inchovercomes the technological challenges that have hindered the development of miniature screens for virtual and augmented reality for years, and the physical limits that limited the miniaturization of cell phones, watches and other devices.

The invention promises make current devices obsolete such as cell phones and computer screens and radically change the way we interact daily with information.

“The technology we develop can provide new ways of interacting with information and the world around us”, he explains. Kunli Xiongresearcher at Uppsala University, in a statement published on .

“This retinal electronic paper could expand creative possibilities, improve remote collaboration and even accelerate scientific research”, adds the researcher.

How it works

The technology of this screen abandons the traditional luminous pixel conceptlike the one that most likely allows you to be reading this article.

Instead of relying on microLEDs, which stop working properly when they are smaller than a micrometer, the researchers used what they call metapixels — tungsten oxide nanoparticles that reflect light differently depending on their size and arrangement and can be manipulated using electrical current.

The principle is similar to that of bird plumage pigmentswhich adopt different colors depending on the way the light falls on them.

The nanoscreen thus designed It is passive and does not require its own light sourcewhich, according to researchers, makes problems such as “color bleeding” disappear, a defect that occurs on LCD panel screens when the backlight light or the color of a pixel infiltrates adjacent areas where it should not appear.

The device also eliminates the problem of lack of uniformity which affects conventional pixels when they are too small.

“This means that each pixel corresponds to a photoreceptor in the eye, that is, at retinal nerve cells that convert light into biological signals. Humans cannot perceive a resolution higher than this”, says Andreas Dahlinresearcher at Chalmers University and also co-author of the study.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the tiny screen, the study authors reproduced “The Kiss”, the famous work by Gustav Klimton a surface measuring just 1.4 x 1.9 millimeters, a quarter thousandth the size of a standard smartphone, with perfect resolution.

The impact of this invention will much more than improving visual quality of existing devices.

“It is a major advance in the development of screens that can be miniaturized while improves quality and reduces energy consumption“, he assures Giovanni Volperesearcher at the University of Gothenburg, and co-author of the study.

As Potential applications are virtually limitless. From virtual reality glasses that reproduce digital worlds that are indistinguishable from physical reality, to implantable medical devices that project vital information directly into the user’s field of vision.

Extreme miniaturization also opens the door to the almost imperceptible, where technology is integrated almost invisibly into everyday objects or even into the human body itself.

“This advance paves the way for creation of virtual worlds which are visually indistinguishable from reality“, conclude the authors of the study.