A photo from open sources
Like a regular printer, a new machine created by Chinese researchers, takes paper and prints on it picture. It only uses not ink, but water – and in addition, printed paper dries back within a day, and it can be reused.
Scientists say their water-based technology allows printing on one sheet dozens of times – and this allows you to save a lot amount of money and trees.
“Several international studies show that about 40 percent of office papers go to the trash after a single reading, “says a chemistry professor at the University of Jilin and one of the authors of the development is Sean Xiao-An Zhang.
The focus is on the paper itself, on which the layer is applied. invisible dyes that appear when exposed to water, and then disappearing.
Printing disappears in about 22 hours at temperatures below 35 degrees Celsius – and faster, if set in the sun, they write Professor Zhang and his team in an article published in the journal “Nature Communications”.
At the same time, with 50 repeated uses of the sheet, the price of printing on it makes up only about one percent of the cost of an inkjet print. Even if the page is used only ten times, the price is all equals one seventeenth inkjet image. Treatment the same sheet dyes adds about 5 percent to its cost, but this is offset by ink savings.
Zhang’s team used previously poorly studied composition under called oxazolidine, which under the influence of water gives a clear blue print in less than a second.
To date, the researchers have managed to create four colors – blue, magenta, gold and purple, but so far their printer can print in only one color at a time.
Their next goal is to increase resolution and duration save image. They also work on a machine that will heat the printed sheets before feeding them to the printer, which make prints on them disappear instantly. At a temperature of 70 degrees centigrade colors fade in 30 seconds.
Zhang reports that the dyed paper is “completely safe,” but in for the sake of confidence, the team is currently conducting tests toxicity in mice.
Water china
