Will flexible touch become the future trend?

Flexible touch screen in the global car market and electronic consumer market is expected to explode first, in China's education market and corporate meeting market is expected to maintain long-term medium to high-speed growth.

The touch screen is composed of touch detection components and a touch screen controller. Touch detection components installed in front of the display are used to detect the user's touch position, and the signal will be sent to the touch screen controller. The main role of the touch screen controller is to convert the received signal into contact coordinates and then transmit it to the CPU, and at the same time can accept the command sent by the CPU and execute it.

According to the working principle, a touch screen can be divided into four types: resistive, capacitive, infrared, and surface acoustic wave type. Resistive and capacitive touch screens are the two mainstream solutions.

A flexible touch screen refers to the transparent conductive film (sensor) in the touch screen, is an important part of the touch screen, its characteristics determine whether the touch screen can be bent and folded. Currently the market's most dominant transparent conductive film material or the use ITO conductive film, but ITO material because of its high resistance, easy to break, not shock-resistant, difficult to handle, and other shortcomings, is difficult to apply on the large size touch screen, flexible screen. Especially when the touch area becomes curved or flexible because ITO belongs to the metal-ceramic, it's brittle easily causes a sharp increase in impedance value, impedance stability is poor. Moreover, the indium metal required for ITO preparation is becoming increasingly scarce, and the substitution of ITO materials will certainly enhance the schedule of material iteration.

Traditional ITO film can not be used for bendable applications, conductivity, and light transmission is poor, along with the rise of intelligent terminals, wearable devices, and other products, touch panels low cost, large size, the panel manufacturers began to study the alternatives to ITO. The bendable, foldable flexible touch screen is the future trend.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)