Researchers from University of Cambridge have developed a technology that will help wipe documents clean with a laser-based method.
Toshiba sells a special laser printer/copier (video) that uses a blue toner which can be almost completely erased with heat treatment.
The team consisting of David Leal-Ayala and his colleagues improvised it further by using laser pulses which vaporise toner particles in thin layers until they are no more, according to the New Scientist.
Leal-Ayala told the scientific journal that the key idea was to find a laser energy level that is high enough to ablate – or vaporise – the toner that at the same time is lower than the destruction threshold of the paper substrate.
"It turns out the best wavelength is 532 nanometres – that’s green visible light – with a pulse length of 4 nanoseconds, which is quite long," said Leal-Ayala.
"The team have found toner-paper combinations in which almost no appreciable traces of toner can be seen after lasing and in which the paper suffers "no significant mechanical damage," added Leal-Ayala.
If this method is taken forward, it would cut down on the paper used, as people can reuse the same paper by ‘deleting’ sheets of paper, according to Extreme Tech.
