Imagine a copy of Nature that looks and feels just like today's printed issue but has a cover and pages that automatically change into the latest edition. At the touch of a stylus, the magazine could be transformed into any back issue stored in an archive in the spine.

This science-fiction scenario has moved a step closer with the announcement by E Ink, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that it has developed its first portable-computer-type display — a prototype of 'electronic paper'.

E Ink's technology consists of an ink made of tiny capsules that change colour when a small electric current is passed through them (see Nature 394, 253–255; 1998). Coat this electronic ink onto paper, and the sheet can produce high-resolution text and images that remain visible when the electricity is switched off.

Simple electronic-ink displays have already been produced, showing only a handful of characters. To display large volumes of text and images, the technology requires dense circuitry known as a backplane. Commercial development is limited by the lack of low-cost backplanes, says Barrett Comiskey, chief architect and co-founder of E Ink.

But the prototype display, developed by E Ink in collaboration with IBM, uses a new form of electronic ink to give the resolution of a laptop display. Because it looks like ink on paper, the screen is up to six times brighter than current laptop screens, and according to E Ink has better contrast than a newspaper, even in bright sunlight. Because it needs no backlight, the display uses one-thousandth of the power required by most portable screens. Details of the design will be presented by IBM and E Ink at the Society for Information Display Conference in San Jose, California in June.

In a step towards the ultimate goal of producing electronic paper, E Ink and Lucent Technologies have also published work (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 98, 4835–4840; 2001) showing the potential of using lightweight plastic backplanes.