NadineYadong Yin and his colleagues from the University of California, Riverside have now created a rewritable paper that does not need any additional inks for printing that could serve as an alternative to regular paper.
SourceL: UC Riverside site
According to an article published on the UCR website, this rewritable paper uses a special color-switching dye called “redox” to form the imaging layer of the paper and uses ultraviolet light to photobleach it. It can be erased through simple heating and written on 20 times without degrading its contrast and resolution.
The rewritable paper is made in a form of glass or plastic film and comes in colors: blue, red and green.
This team of chemists are working on increasing the number of times the paper could be printed and erased from 20 to 100 times, and extend the text’s legibility to more than three days.
The United States Department of Energy funded this research to make this invention possible.
Check out this video showing the process of using the rewritable paper: