Importance

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Abstract

A method of addressing a sheet of a rotating element sheet material that has a reduced applied electric field requirement when a gyricon sheet using magnetic trapping is disclosed. A magnetic trapping gyricon sheet comprises a substrate with a plurality of rotatable elements disposed in the substrate. The elements comprise at least two portions, each portion having an associated optical modulation characteristic and the optical modulation characteristics of at least one portion are different from the optical modulation characteristic of at least one other portion. Importantly, one portion is magnetized, and the element also has an anisotropy for providing an electrical dipole moment. The electrical dipole moment renders the element electrically responsive such that when the rotating element is rotatably disposed in an electric field while the electrical dipole moment of the element is provided, the element tends to rotate to an orientation in which the electrical dipole moment aligns with the field. A small additional magnet is associated with each of the elements. When the magnetized portion of the element is the portion of the element nearest the additional magnet a magnetic attractive force will exist between the additional magnetized means and the magnetized portion of the element, A magnetic field is applied to the sheet in the vicinity of at least one of the rotatable elements and its associated magnet to reduce the magnetic attractive force therebetween. When the magnetic field has been reduced then applying a reduced electric field in the vicinity of the least one rotatable element will cause the rotatable element to align with the electric field.

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First Claim