Printers next up for OLED revolution?

The Japanese company has created a print head that uses organic light-emitting diodes as a light source. To date, OLED elements have appeared primarily in displays, and rather small ones at that.

Currently, printers and copiers use either lasers or standard LEDs as light sources. Epson worked with Sumitomo Chemical to develop a brighter OLED that can be used in printing, and the company said that prototypes have produced printouts with image quality comparable to or better than that produced by conventional laser printers.

An OLED print head would have two advantages. It can produce superior images by more precisely controlling a beam of light, and the print head can be very small and thin. Epson hopes to use the OLED technology to develop smaller colour printers that have higher resolution and faster printing speeds.

In displays, an OLED element produces a brighter image than an LCD does and one that is easier to read in bright sunlight. It doesn't use backlighting like LCDs, so its power consumption is lower and screens can be slimmer. Sony has fitted an OLED display in one of its Clie handhelds, and Samsung has produced a 21-inch display prototype intended for a TV monitor.

Epson is one of the two largest printer makers in Japan, competing head-to-head with Canon. In recent years, especially after going public in June 2003, it has been putting more emphasis on research and development, and the efforts have generated new products such as a DVD player-projector combo and rear-projection TVs with a built-in colour printer.

Hayashi Sakawa of CNET Japan reported from Tokyo.