An area of research I've heard a bit about for next gen e-paper displays is to use electrowetting[1] which is a different approach that looks intersting
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrowetting#Applications
Re:Reasonably priced color e-ink display
by sparker72678 on Monday July 20, 2020 @04:01PM
(#23901320)
Oh, fascinating! This looks really interesting!
But when you do this, you're dragging a _single_ color.
_All_ the colors are in the capsule, but you can only truly pull a single one at a time, a true pigment-like mixing isn't possible. If you pull the Cyan up, you're necessarily losing the Magenta, for example.
If you had a high enough resolution addressable grid, you might be able to put the pixels close enough that you couldn't tell, but you'd still be basically doing sub-pixel color at that point, not truly mixing the various colors at the base level.
Maybe there are other e-ink displays doing something else, but all the ones I've seen are doing some form of this approach.
Here's a fascinating video on how these displays work, and how you can modify the firmware of the driver to get faster refresh rates (with an increased risk of burn-in). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsbiO8EAsGw