ZINK Mobile Printer

Boston-based Zink Imaging has developed a new method of printing without the need for ink cartridges, which is being aimed initially at wireless camera phones. The aim is to ensure that more of those millions of photos snapped on mobile phones—most of them never printed—find their way onto paper. Zink is built around technology developed by Polaroid that uses chemically treated paper instead of a traditional ink-on-paper printing process.

Instead of putting ink cartridges into the printer, as is typical with printers from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Lexmark (LXK), and scores of other printing companies, Zink's process involves embedding the ink into the paper.

When it encounters heat, different layers of ink are activated and appear on the paper. The printing process involves controlling how heat is applied to the paper using thousands of tiny heated print heads. "We can make incredibly small and easy-to-use printers that can print images with the touch of a single button," says Zink Chief Executive Wendy Caswell, a former Polaroid executive. "When you don't have to deal with ink, you don't have to deal with the complexity that ink requires. This lets us get the size of the printer down to the size of something that can fit in your pocket, or which can be embedded into any type of electronic device."