Beijing, January 29 (IANS): Imagine a simple printer at your office or home that uses water instead of ink to print reams of papers. Possible, say Chinese researchers. But the catch is not in the printer but the paper. According to scientists at Jilin University in Changchun, China, the printed characters last for a day on a special paper that can then be re-used. “Every time you print, it’s fresh,” Sean Zhang, professor of chemistry, was quoted as saying. “We are using a commercially available inkjet printer. We just filled the cartridges with water and put it back. It’s like normal printing. The magic is in the paper,” Zhang, a former researcher at Hewlett-Packard Labs in Menlo Park, California, told DiscoveryNews. This method allows the paper to be reused several times and could potentially have cheaper running costs. The team developed a special coating on the paper that responds to the water.
