The HP IonTouch enables non-contact imaging and is set to impact many industries.
HP revealed its new technology and said that the HP IonTouch “is a secure, integrated system for placing and updating timely, personalized visual information onto digital displays embedded in plastic cards of the size, flexibility, and durability of a standard credit card”.
At present this is a pilot and not yet ready for release but the implications for many industries are vast. Omer Gila, HP IonTouch Project Director, said: “The IonTouch enables non-contact imaging, removing the electronics from conventional electronic paper displays, including the display backplane that requires electrodes, transistors, interconnects, a battery, and a processor. This allows us to add a high resolution 2.5” display to each card with only an incremental cost of just a few tens of cents”.
The new technology is designed to work with IonTouch imagers and the image remains permanent until reimaged by an IonTouch device. Currently it offers 300×300 dpi in black and white with “16 levels of grey scale” and the writable area is 2.5” large enough for ID photos or QR code and some text information.
Napoleon Leoni, HP IonTouch Engineer, said: “The image can be rewritten more than 10,000 times. Each image can stay as it is printed forever, or until you run the card through the imager again,” and noted that “the cards are made to be flexible, durable, water-washable, and impact resistant”. Production cost is as little as a “couple of dollars” per card.
Gila commented: “That really changes the game and opens up IonTouch cards for use in a wide variety of sectors. Since almost every plastic card in the market can benefit from a writable display, we believe the number of potential applications is almost endless.”
Leoni commented on the plus for the environment: “Making cards rewriteable makes them reusable. This is good for business but also good for the environment as it eliminates millions of wasted cards every year. Since the only way to change information on the IonTouch cards is via our IonTouch imagers, that also adds another layer of protection, making the cards very secure, too. Being able to update or rotate security codes boosts the security of credit cards and enables reuse of gift cards, replacing the scratchable or permanent security codes they use today.”