Wide operating temperature range electrophoretic device

1. An electrophoretic device comprising a first electrode and a second electrode spaced apart from said first electrode, and between said electrodes an electrophoretic cell containing an electrophoretic ink and one or more non-planar solid polymer elements, said ink including charged particles of at least one type suspended in a suspending fluid,

said suspending fluid is in contact with one or more of said non-planar, solid polymer elements, and said solid polymer resists swelling by said suspending fluid, swelling by less than 15% over an operating temperature range of said device spanning at least 30 degrees Celsius,

and, 75% or more by mass of said suspending fluid is an organosilicone or an aliphatic hydrocarbon and said solid polymer is a fluorinated elastomeric polymer.

2. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein the refractive indices of said solid polymer elements and said suspending fluid are matched to have a difference of less than 0.0075, and, the matched refractive indices at 25 degrees Celsius and 589.3 nm of light are less than 1.460.

3. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein said non-planar, solid polymer element is an optically transparent elastomer and has a glass transition temperature, Tg, less than 20 degrees Celsius and has crosslinks.

4. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein said charged particles are responsive to an electric field applied to said electrophoretic device to move between: a first extreme light state in which particles are maximally spread within said cell to lie in the path of sunlight through the cell and to strongly attenuate light transmitted through the cell, and a second extreme light state in which said particles are maximally concentrated within the cell to remove them from the path of sunlight through the cell and to substantially transmit light through the cell to provide visual access there through.

5. An electrophoretic device according to claim 3 wherein said glass transition temperature, Tg, is lower than the lowest operating temperature of said electrophoretic device, and preferably less than zero degrees Celsius, more preferably less than −10 degrees Celsius, even more preferably less than −20 degrees Celsius, and most preferably less than −40 degrees Celsius.

6. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein said swelling is less than 10%, and more preferably is less than 5%, and even more preferably is less than 2%, and most preferably is less than 1%.

7. An electrophoretic device according to claim 3 wherein said non-planar, solid polymer element is viscoelastic for temperatures greater than said glass transition temperature; and its Young's Modulus, E, is less than 50 MPa and its hardness is less than 90 Shore A.

8. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein said non-planar, solid polymer element has flexible linkages in its backbone and includes one or more of the following linkages: ether, siloxane, fluoroether, thioether, methylene, difluoromethylene, or phosphazene.

9. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein said elastomeric, non-planar, solid polymer includes the following polymers, or copolymers or terpolymers that use one or more of the following: a fluoroalkane polymer, a perfluoroether polymer, a fluorosilicone polymer, a fluorinated (meth)acrylate polymer, a fluorosilicone (meth)acrylate polymer, a fluorinated polyolefin polymer, a fluorinated aliphatic polycarbonate, or a fluorinated polyurethane, and copolymers include a fluorosilicone-co-siloxane copolymer, a fluorosilicone-co-fluoroalkane copolymer, or a fluoroether-co-siloxane copolymer.

10. An electrophoretic device according to claim 9 wherein said elastomer's polymer or copolymer has at least one pendant group containing a CF 3 moiety; and, the polymer includes a repeat unit either of the type: fluoroalkylsiloxane including methyltrifluoropropylsiloxane, methylpentafluorobutylsiloxane, methylheptafluoropentylsiloxane, or methylnonafluorohexylsiloxane; or fluoroalkoxyalkylsiloxane.

11. An electrophoretic device according to claim 1 wherein said suspending fluid is silicone oil comprising 75% or more (mole %) of one or more of the following polymer repeat units: dimethylsiloxane, methylalkylsiloxane, or methylphenylsiloxane, and said solid polymer is a fluorosilicone or fluorosilicone containing copolymer or terpolymer comprising more than 10% (mole %) methyltrifluoropropylsiloxane, and preferably more than 20%, and most preferably more than 25%.

12. An electrophoretic device according to claim 4 wherein said elastomeric, non-planar, solid polymer comprises multiple cure functional groups including thermal-curing and photo-curing groups.

13. An electrophoretic film device including the electrophoretic device according to claim 5 wherein said electrodes are transparent and coated onto a pair of film substrates.

14. An electrophoretic device according to claim 11 wherein the dielectric constant of said solid polymer is greater than the dielectric constant of said suspending fluid.