Xerox Erasable Paper, a Breakthrough Future Paper

Xerox Corporation shows off the technology of erasable paper to public in WIRED NextFest, a place for showing off global innovations that can change the world. This paper is re-usable and they hope it can not only save the paper usage but also reduce the paper waste. The idea has been proposed by Xerox since last year when it was still in a prototype.

Based on the research, 40% of office printouts are used for less than a day, The Xerox engineers have developed a new technology which enables the user to re-use the paper. The project is the collaboration between Xerox Research Centre of Canada and PARC (Palo Alto Research Center). Paul Smith, the Xerox material and new synthesis laboratory manager has showed off their ability by erasing a temporary printed out paper.

Engineers accomplished the feat by impregnating the paper with chemicals that darken when exposed to a specific wavelength of light, allowing documents to be “printed” on without ever actually laying down ink or toner. The effect fades with time though, so the dark portions on printed pages disappear automatically within 16 to 24 hours of printing. The pages can also be exposed to heat to clear immediately.

The other invention introduced by Xerox is significantly more friendly to the environment – a printing technology that can reduce the waste up to 90% and purify the water with less cost and use less energy compared with the conventional method. Xerox has also demonstrated a printing method to make document forgery harder because it can print very small hologram images which can only be read by a magnifying glass under ultra violet light.