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Fees receipt format for Research and Development

- Receipts are terrible, and not just because sometimes you go to the drug store for one thing and leave with a literal scroll of coupons and ads. Most store receipts are printed on thermal paper, which contains compounds that stick to your fingers and contaminate the recycling stream. That's right, you can stop putting them in the blue bin now. But there's a new, better option rolling out soon, a technology that began with a failure. Receipts are printed using a process that's faster and cheaper than typical inkjet printing, but it requires a special heat-sensitive thermal paper that's coated with color-changing inks, typically the kind known as leuco dyes, along with an acid developer. At room temperature, these dyes are colorless. But when the hot print head passes over the paper, a reaction between the dye and the acid developer occurs. The acid donates a proton to the dye, which changes its structure and turns it black, gray, or purple. We've used this kind of paper since the '70s, but it has a bunch of drawbacks. First, leuco dye reactions are unstable, so their colors fade, as anyone who's ever left a receipt in the bottom of their bag for months knows. - The images can be reversible. Say you wanna keep a receipt. It may go away over time. - More significantly, some of those developing agents have been banned by the European Chemicals Agency for their potential effects on human health. And while it might seem like a good idea to put old receipts in the recycling bin, those chemicals contaminate the recycling stream. Where could that then wind up in my house? - Your cereal boxes, your soda cases. When you open those up and you see the brown cardboard on the inside, those are almost always recyclable materials. - So, scientists are coming up with new paper that can work with the same old thermal printers without relying on leuco inks or acid developers. And the technology that makes this possible started out as a failure. One way of producing color without chemical pigments is using what's called structural color. Synthetic structural color relies on tiny structures like microspheres, usually filled with air, that scatter light, creating opaque color. Microspheres are nothing new. They're in house paints, sunscreens, all kinds of stuff that you use every day. And not long ago, a group of researchers was playing with the formula to develop more durable ones. In one test when they exposed the microspheres to heat, their tiny structure just collapsed. - We had spent years designing them to be very stable and were a little surprised. These hollow spheres actually collapsed. But they were at very high temperatures that we hadn't seen before. - The melted microspheres couldn't scatter light anymore and the surface became transparent. Then they had an idea. Maybe there was a way to use those collapsing spheres to their advantage. The thermal printer paper they came up with after these initial failures has three layers, plain old paper on the bottom, a dark black pigment in the middle, and those weak, collapsing microspheres on top. In their normal room temperature state, the spheres reflect light, leaving an opaque layer on top of the paper with a faint blue sheen. When the thermal printer head passes over them, however, the spheres collapse. The heated area becomes transparent, showing the black pigment underneath. - It's not a chemical reaction between a dye and a developer. It's a physical change. - It's a bit like driving your car over a thin layer of freshly-fallen snow. When undisturbed, the snow is a white, opaque layer over the road. But when your car tires pass over and crush it down, melting it, you can see the black pavement below. Now, maybe you're wondering how those microspheres are made. You start with an emulsion that contains a hydrophilic monomer with an acidic functional group. The monomers join together, or polymerize, into solid balls. Next, you add a second monomer molecule, this time a hydrophobic one, which coats those cores as it polymerizes. It's like a hard candy shell. Then you add a base to the mix. And remember, the inner polymer is acidic, so the acid and base react to form a lot of ions inside the polymer shell. Water from the emulsion rushes in to offset that ionic concentration. The water inflates the sphere, stretching the outer polymer shell to almost triple its size. As the mixture dries, the water evaporates through the permeable skin of the sphere, leaving it hollow. Paper made with these microspheres doesn't contain any of the acid developers traditional thermal papers use. Totally recyclable. And bonus, it's also compatible with existing thermal printers, so stores don't need to upgrade any of their equipment. Your local grocery store isn't the only place where this technology could soon show up. I'm talking about concert tickets, shipping labels, clothing tags, and just about anything with a barcode. Then there could be temperature-sensitive warning labels on frozen foods and refrigerated drugs. You could tell at a glance if they've been exposed to heat and spoiled. Heat-sensitive coatings could also show when circuit breakers and other electrical equipment are too hot to touch, or when medical equipment has been effectively heat sterilized. Sometimes failure is the first step to innovation. In this case, a new idea that may end up in our pockets, purses, and takeout bags and leave our recycling stream a little cleaner. What is it that keeps driving you to do this work? - Going out and being able to buy something off the shelf that you made or you've played a part in is huge. - We get to tackle technical and scientifically interesting questions, but the outcome touch your life every day.