In an effort to curb the adverse environmental impacts of paper production, researchers in a new study have developed a light-printable paper—paper that can be printed with UV light, erased by heating to 120 °C (250 °F), and rewritten more than 80 times. The secret to printing with light lies in the color-changing chemistry of nanoparticles, a thin coating of which can be easily applied to conventional paper to transform it into the light-printable version.
The researchers, Wenshou Wang and coauthors at Shandong University in China; the University of California, Riverside; and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, have published a paper on the light-printable rewritable paper in a recent issue of Nano Letters.
"The greatest significance of our work is the development of a new class of solid-state photoreversible color-switching system to produce an ink-free light-printable rewritable paper that has the same feel and appearance as conventional paper, but can be printed and erased repeatedly without the need for additional ink," Yadong Yin, Chemistry Professor at the University of California, Riverside, told Phys.org. "Our work is believed to have enormous economic and environmental merits to modern society."
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