ITO Touchscreen Design, Technology and Principles

ITO touchscreens are ever-present in our lives, from the laptops, smart phones and tablets we use at home to touchscreen guitars, cash points and the backs of airplanes’ seats.

Touchscreen Design

The design of touchscreens can (depending partly on price-points and applications) vary significantly between varying shapes and sizes of electronic devices. Some systems track vibration or light/sound wave reflection, others track shadows/light moving across a screen’s surface. The most commonly used technology in today’s tablets and smartphones monitors changes within the electrical currency running through their screen surfaces’ conductive layers.

ITO Touchscreen Technology

These conductive layers must consist of a material that is highly conductive, transparent and very fine. They must, however, also be sufficiently tough to survive being exposed to sweaty palms, the cluttered bottoms of bags, pockets and similar unforgiving environments.

Easily mass-produced in the shape of thin films, highly conductive and optically transparent, Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is today one of the world’s most popular and most widely used transparent conducting oxides. It is subsequently used to create the conductive layers of most smart phone/tablet screens.

ITO Touchscreen Principles

Indium Tin Oxide touchscreens essentially work by users touching the screens with a finger or another suitable object, which changes the conductive layers’ electric state at the precise point of contact. Their devices (smart phones, tablets, etc.) then complete requested tasks by tracking changes generated by their finger’s movement (or, in case of multi-touch systems, fingers).

Diamond Coatings

Now a leading Indium Tin Oxide touchscreen manufacturer in the USA, Diamond Coatings can offer anything from design & development to volume production of both capacitive and resistive touchscreens. Produced on glass or plastic (rigid or flexible), our screens can be provided with anti-glare and other finishes as required and in sizes ranging up to 1,000mm x 1,000mm.

Resistive Touchscreens

Enabling completely variable X-Y touch point detection, Diamond Coatings’ resistive touchscreens can be provided ready-to-use, complete with all connections, bonding and patterning. We can also provide fully shielded touchscreens.

Capacitive Touchscreens

At approximately 90%, the visible transmission of capacitive touchscreens is higher than that of resistive screens (which is approximately 70%). Index matching technology further enables Diamond Coatings to produce capacitive screens with visible transmissions equal to those of uncoated glass/plastic.

More Information

For more detailed information or to discuss your specific touchscreen requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us online, by e-mail: sales@diamondcoatings.com or by telephone: (480) 999-3456  – or 001 (480) 999-3456 if calling from outside the US – today.

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