Inkless printing company Zink receives $35M funding

Zink hints at bringing their space-age 'zero ink' printing technology to wider market

It's not often that you hear about a company that aims to revolutionize an entire industry. But that is exactly what Zink, a company that manufactures paper for inkless color printing technology, is trying to do. Zink announced Tuesday a $35 million funding B series, led by investors Genii Capital.

Former board members Mary Jeffries and Ira Parker have also been hired as co-CEOs of Zink, in conjunction with this recent investment. Founded in 2005, Zink's research and development labs arebased in Bedford, Massachussets, with a manufacturing outlet in Whitsett, North Carolina.

Zink's inkless printing technology works by running special paper, which has been embedded with layers of cyan, magenta, and yellow "Amorphochromic" dye crystals, through a printer that heats the paper to create images. Zink's "zero ink" technology is able to isolate the heating of each color-forming layer to create an array of colors, and images of photorealistic resolution.

Inkless printing has been around for a while, and was actually used on some fax machine models. However the tech behind the oldest inkless method, thermal printing, doesn't allow for color printing. The other current inkless printing tech, which is now being developed by Xerox and has not yet been released to the public, uses paper coated with UV-sensitive chemicals and allows for color printing, as well as erasing of images via the same UV process.

The Zink technology has over 180 patents and patents pending. They are the only company to use the Amorphochromic dye crystals method.

Based on images on the company's website, the Zink paper seems very like normal paper. Zink's tech has already been implemented in a few photo printers that have gone out to market and, notably, a new generation of Poloroid cameras.

Zink has also partnered with Dell to create the Wasabi handheld color printer for photo printing, compatible with mobile phones, digital cameras, and blue-tooth.

One would speculate that the company will be using their new funding to put this space-age technology to the conventional printer market, since as of yet, it has been used only for photo printing. Zink could not be reached for immediate comment.