Scientists of the Jilin University, China have invented a printer that uses water to print, instead of ink. After about 22 hours, the paper fades back to a plain sheet of white paper, allowing it to be re-used.
The “water-jet” technology is capable of reprinting numerous times, spares people their money and saves trees. As per the statistics, many papers (40% of office Prints) are throwing into the dustbin after the single reading.
What technology applies in the water-jet printer?
In the water-jet printer, the technology work is the paper, which is treated with an invisible dye that colours upon exposure to water and later disappears. It uses a dye compound called oxazolidine that gives a clear, blue print in less than one second upon application of water.
- Within a day, the used paper fades back to white which makes it reusable.
- At temperature lesser than 35 degree Celsius, the print would fade away in 22 hours, while at higher temperature, it would fade faster. The technology is ideal for documents that are printed to be read once and then discarded.
- At 70 degree Celsius , the colour disappears within about 30 seconds.
- At present, there are four water-printed colours – blue, magenta, gold and purple. Though, they can only print in one hue at a time.
- The technology does not require changing a printer but only replacing the ink in the cartridge with H20, using a syringe.
- A chemistry professor, Mr. Sean Xiao-An Zhang, supervised the work.
The scientists are also working on a machine that will heat pre-printed sheets of paper as they are fed into the machine, fading the pages instantaneously for re-printing. Their next step is to improve both the resolution and the duration of the print.