Scientists aim to deliver e-paper in full computerised colour

Scientists in Cambridge have launched a £12m three-year project to create the next generation of e-paper, which may herald the arrival of fully interactive, all-colour computerised newspapers and magazines.

Liquavista, spun out of the Philips Research Labs in Eindhoven two years ago, has won part of the backing from the government-funded Technology Strategy Board. The project is also backed by Plastic Logic. The US technology company last month unveiled a prototype e-paper that looks much more like a sheet of A4 than the offerings of rivals such as Amazon's Kindle and Sony eReader, which resemble paperback books.

But Plastic Logic's device is only black and white, not very flexible and its screen updates quite slowly. Liquavista is working on a full-colour flexible screen that would allow newspapers and other publications to give their audience a much more interactive product that could include video.

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The technology is based on a process called electrowetting, which uses electricity to manipulate a thin layer of liquid so that it changes colour. It uses far less power than a traditional liquid crystal display (LCD) and, crucially, the individual cells change fast enough to run video.

Newspaper editors, grappling with declining circulation and the migration of advertising spending to the internet, have been hoping for years that e-paper will move beyond the drawing board into reality. The dream is for a device allowing readers to upload the newspaper in the morning, then update editorial content and ads as the day goes on, perhaps using a mobile phone or wireless connection.

Liquavista's chief scientific officer Rob Hayes and chief technology officer Johan Feenstra have been working on the technology for almost a decade.

The company plans to announce its first range of products at an electronics fair in Hong Kong this month.