close to commercializa- tion. Many can offer gray-scale displays, but all have had difficulties produc- ing color. This is where pCLC flake technology has a distinct advantage given the plethora of colorful flakes available. Additionally, whereas typical elec- tronic paper technologies use absorption to produce color and reflect light by scattering, the color produced by pCLC flakes is based entirely on reflection and is inherently polarized. This unique capability of pCLC flakes is due to their liquid crystalline properties, thus greatly broadening the scope of appli- cation to other areas beyond information and image displays. "The ability to actively manipulate polarized light by means of an electric field is extremely useful for a large number of applications in optical technol- ogy, including switchable and tunable color filters, optical switches for fiber optics or telecommunications, and switchable micropolarizers, in addition to information displays," says research engineer Kenneth L. Marshall, who heads the team developing the technology at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester. "The ability to produce this electrically switch- able polarization sensitivity in a material that can be conformally coated on flat or curved surfaces is one of the most unique and exciting aspects of this technology." Marshall sees other applications such as "smart windows" that could change color, reflect sunlight, or become completely opaque at will, environmentally robust switchable "paints," and even "patterned" particles for storage of encoded and encrypted information and document security. A more "off-the-wall" application includes living room wallpaper that one can tune to different colors or even to new patterns that have been downloaded from the Internet. But don't expect to be finding these switchable pCLC flakes in products very soon. "There are a number of issues that need be solved first, like getting all of the flakes to move in the same direction at the same time," says Tanya Kosc, a