From smartphones, tablets and laptops to cash points, transatlantic aircrafts’ seat backs, musical instruments (touch screen guitars, for instance), touch screens are now a firm part of our lives and can be found wherever we happen to go.
Electronic devices of all shapes and sizes now feature many different forms of touchscreen design depending on their price point and application. The most commonly used technology on the smart phones and tablets of today works by monitoring changes in electrical current on the surface of the screen. There are also systems that can track the reflection of sound or light waves, vibration, and light and shadow moving across the surface.
Top of the leaderboard for touchscreens in consumer electronics is a system that monitors perturbations in electrical current on a conductive layer within the screen. In order to do this, you need a very fine, transparent material with high conductivity. Your material also needs to be able to handle the tough environment that the average smartphone or tablet might be exposed to (pockets and sweaty palms are not the most forgiving places to be).
Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) in Touch Screens
Indium Tin Oxide (or tin-doped indium oxide) is particularly important to the world’s dominant smartphone and tablet manufacturers because of its unique material properties perfect for touch screen applications:
- high conductivity
- easily mass produced as thin films
- optically transparent.
Essentially in the majority of the latest smart phones and tablets – ITO forms the conductive layer used to monitor the changes in electrical state as you touch and swipe the screen.
In its thinnest form, ITO is both transparent and highly conductive which has resulted in ITO being one of the world’s most popular and widely used transparent conducting oxides.
It is also reasonably easy to handle and deposit ITO as a thin film which makes it perfect for mass production using techniques such as physical vapor deposition, sputtering or evaporation methods.
Diamond Coatings
Having positioned themselves as the leading indium tin oxide touch panel manufacturers in the UK, Diamond Coatings can provide anything from development to production volumes in both resistive and capacitive touch screens. Available in sizes up to 1,000 mm x 1,000 mm, screens can be produced on plastic (flexible or rigid) or glass and provided with anti-glare and/or other required finishes.
Resistive Indium Tin Oxide Touch Screen
Resistive ITO touch panels enable completely variable X-Y detection of touch points, Diamond Coatings have the ability to provide ready-to-use, complete X-Y resistive touch screens including all bonding, connections and patterning, as well as offering fully shielded ITO touch screens.
Capacitive Indium Tin Oxide Touch Screen
Capacitive ITO touch screens have higher visible transmission (approximately 90%) than resistive ITO touch screens, which have a visible transmission of approximately 70%. Using index matching technology, Diamond Coatings can produce capacitive touch screens with a visible transmission equal to that of uncoated plastic or glass. Capacitive screens require chips to drive them. Diamond Coatings’ good links to chip manufacturers enable them to provide customers with complete packages.
ITO Applications
ITO is not just used for touch screens, its fantastic properties have created a huge global demand in the following technologies:
- Liquid crystal displays (LCDs)
- Plasma Screens
- Electronic ink applications
- LEDs
- Organic LEDs
- Touch screens
- Solar Cells / Photovoltaics
- Heated windscreens and mirrors
- Sensor coatings
- Strain gauges
- and many more…
To find out more about our production process and our various products please get in touch with us today.