Says Xerox Fellow Santokh Badesha, who will work on the research, "Both on the products a company develops and from an overall environmental standpoint, any effort to lower energy consumption has a positive effect. Making a better thermal conductor will benefit not only Xerox but the industry at large."

The funding includes two grants from the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research as part of a $1.84 million grant package awarded to RPI and to Clarkson's Center for Advanced Materials Processing. The two projects will focus on developing materials for energy efficient color fusers and cold chargers.

Color fusers, used in products like the Xerox iGen3™ Digital Production Press, tend to operate at high temperatures. Creating a material to help lower the temperature of fusers would prolong their life and overall make a machine more energy efficient.

Cold chargers sensitize a photoreceptor prior to image exposure. Since cold chargers tend to consume significant amounts of energy, developing one with new materials would reduce overall energy consumption.

The universities will work on developing the new class of materials while Xerox will assist with making the devices, testing them and integrating them into color products.

"These are industry issues that we've been struggling with for some time," Badesha said. "The class of materials developed will have a wide range of applications and is an excellent example of our ability to capitalize on external R&D."

Research on energy efficiency is part of Xerox's ongoing investments in sustainable innovation -- or "green products" -- that deliver measurable benefits to the environment, such as solid ink printing technology, which generates 90 percent less waste than comparable laser printers; document-management software aimed at improving workers’ productivity and reducing dependency on paper; and other paper-saving innovations. For more information about Xerox research, visit .