Things To Know About Rugged And Non-Rugged Touch Screens

By Derek Oja, MobileDemand

Let’s learn a bit about different touch screens that are found on consumer and commercial devices.  There are many types of touch screen technologies but we’ll focus on those most commonly found on mobile devices; resistive, capacitive, projected capacitive and digitizer. Chances are there is a touch device somewhere close at hand; touch it with something like a plastic pen tip and you can deduce if it is resistive or capacitive, the two most popular screen types. If resistive, it will pick up the touch point; if capacitive it will not.  

A resistive touch panel is three main layers laminated together; the top layer usually is a plastic film, the middle layer is an adhesive with a border similar to a picture frame, along with spacer dots spread over the active area of the touch screen and the bottom layer is glass. The inner surfaces of the top film and bottom glass are coated with a micro thin layer of electrically conductive indium tin oxide (ITO). Additional layers might be anti-reflective coatings or other optical treatments. The top layer has traditionally been a plastic film that can easily be deflected and pressed past the spacer dots so it touches the bottom glass layer creating an electrical touch point between the layers. Resistive screens transmit about 75% of the LCD’s light.

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