Development of Inkless Paper

Jan 9
08:58

2012

Talha Azeem

Talha Azeem

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Imagine if you would not have to invest in ink cartridges. Instead you need a printer that uses heat to craft pictures and the paper that would make those images appear like magic

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How much do you estimate you spend on printer ink cartridges every year? How about printer ribbons? What do you spend on paper on top of that number? Or would you prefer not to think about just how much money you spend month after month just to replace your cartridges? Granted,Development of Inkless Paper Articles it can be a little disconcerting sometimes to know just how much of our hard-earned dollars goes toward printing out memorable pictures or important documents. Yet it has somehow become an inescapable part of life. When we need documents or pictures, we turn to our printers, their cartridges, and their ink.

Now imagine what it would be like if you didn't have to spend money on cartridges. That if one day you ran out of an ink cartridge, you could finally decide not to go buy another one. Instead, you could go out and trade in your old printer for something brand new. Something that your friends may be eyeing with envy. All you would need is a printer that uses heat to craft pictures and the paper that would make those images appear like magic. Sound too good to be true? Thanks to the power of scientific discovery, it's already here.

This is precisely where Zink paper technology comes in. Zink stands for something simple - zero ink. The idea of inkless paper sounds strange. How on earth can paper be without ink? Where does the color come from? At first glance, Zink paper looks like any other white sheet of paper. However, the truth behind Zink paper is that it is multilayered with color-forming chemistry that, when heat is applied, can showcase all the colors of the rainbow. Pictures come out looking crisp and clear, just with a single sheet of Zink paper and a bit of heat.

Zink paper has several layers to it in order to create a finished product. There's the base layer, a layer of cyan crystals, a layer of yellow crystals, a layer of magenta crystals, and finally a protective topcoat. This glossy coating is a polymer overcoat that helps keep out UV light and moisture. But the paper is still no thicker than the average sheet of photo paper. Likewise, Zink can always adjust the paper thickness to your needs, as well as how glossy you want the topcoat to look. The color layers themselves take up no more thickness than a human hair!

At the moment, Zink paper works best for printing photos and other color images. It is a relatively new technology, so finding it is difficult and the costs are a bit pricey. However, the same can be said for any new technology in its initial stages.

While Zink paper is currently best used for photographs, the technology is still in developement. That means that sometime in the future, your company may throw out their old ink printer and cash in for a brand new Zink-based printer. As technology continues to advance, it would come as no surprise to see Zink paper becoming even thinner, available in black only, and make printing basic documents faster than ever before. Office employees would no longer have to worry about wrestling with massive ink cartridges of varying styles and trying to figure out which is right for certain printers. Instead, it would just be a matter of popping more Zink paper into the printer.

The United States spends billions and billions of dollars on ink every year. Likewise, not all of those cartridges can be recycled and end up in landfills. Zink paper would make cartridges obsolete. Imagine the tonnage of cartridges that would no longer need to be created or thrown away! Instead of our spending skyrocketing into the billions, the amount we would save in every single way would be in the billions! The implications of this new technology are both exciting and staggering. The printer world, tech world, and science world will certainly keep an eye out on Zink paper and await the day that it can be used in every household and every office.