Demo 07, the technology showcase where start-ups deliver six-minute pitches to would be investors, potential partners and the media is off and running here in Palm Desert, Southern California.

Second up on stage was Zink, a technology spinout from the old Polaroid instant photo company. Zink, which stands for ‘zero-ink’ has developed a new way to print full colour digital images without the need for ink cartridges or ribbons. The secret sauce is in the special paper that uses proprietary formulated layers of colour-dye crystals embedded in the paper that change from white to one of three basic colours – yellow, magenta and cyan – when a precise dose of heat is delivered by a low-cost thermal print head. The resulting prints are bright, high quality and durable..

Zink believes the first application for the new technology will be to enable camera phone and digital camera owners to carry a small business-card scanner around in their pocket, load up packets of 10-sheets of Zink paper and liberate some of those 300bn images that would otherwise probably never see the light of day.

Zink’s founders claim the price of the resulting prints will be about the same as regular ink-jet prints and that pocket-sized printers should cost around $100.

January 31st, 2007 in Uncategorised | Permalink