We can see lot of cards around our daily lives. These are creit cards, pre-paid cards, loyalty cards and so on. As a resutl, the plastic waste from disposed cards amount to considerable volume raising a new environmental issue. Then the technology that makes reues of card easier is now in demand. On the other hand, making card application more convenient by visualizingthe data stored in a card is in another big demand. Considering the use of card by elders, we believe that this visual information must have excellent recognizability with high contrast. To meet these social demands, we have developed rewritable thermal media. ThermorRewrite, using Leuco dye. This new tehcnolgoy uses the reaction between leuco dye and specially designed developer and it's reversible process is controlled by the way of applying heat. The excellent reocgnizability and high resolution are great advantages of thermorewrite, and the rewritable times can be more than five hundred times so far. The mjaor application of rewritable card in Japan is loyalty card program for retail shop and restaurant. The applciation is expanding to medical usage i.e. consuilting ticket, owing to tis good readability of images. Furthermore, we believe that the usefulness of this rewritable techology will be more clear in the smart card application since smart card can hold rich information and showing a part of data on card surface visually is very helpful for the card holder. In addition, we are trying to expand the application of our rewritable material to logistics and display applications by improving its reprint durability and the resistnce to the environment.
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