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Touch Screen Sensor
Touch Screen Sensor
Quanling zheng
How Does a Touchscreen Work?
A basic touchscreen has three main components:
1 Touch sensor;
2 Controller;
3 Software driver.
The touchscreen is an input device, so it needs to be c
ombined with a display and a PC or other device to m
ake a complete touch input system.
Touch Sensor
• Resistive touchscreen
• Capacitive touchscreen
• Infrared touchscreen
• Surface acoustic wave (SAW) touchscreen
• Strain gauge touchscreen
• Optical imaging touchscreen
• Dispersive signal technology touchscreen
Resistive touchscreen
• Structure
Resistive touch screens
consist of a glass or
acrylic panel that is
coated with electrically
conductive and resistive
layers made with indium
tin oxide (ITO) .The thin
layers are separated by
invisible spacers.
4-wire resistive touchscreen
5-wire resistive touchscreen
• Characters:
1. Cost effective solutions
2. Activated by a stylus, a finger or gloved hand
3. Not affected by dirt, dust, water, or light
4. 75%~85% clarify
5. resistive layers can be damaged by a very sharp object
Projected-capacitive touchscreen
• Structure
Projected capacitive touchscre
ens have front and back prote
ctive glass
providing optical and strength
enhancement options.
Its middle layer consists of a la
minated sensor grid of micro-fi
ne wires, and
optical enhancement options.
Projected-capacitive touchscreen
• Structure
Surface capacitive technology consists of a
uniform conductive coating on a glass
panel. Electrodes around the panel’s edge
evenly distribute a low voltage across the
conductive layer, creating a uniform electric
field.
Surface-capacitive touchscreen
• Working principle
A human body is an electric conductor, so when you touch the screen with
a finger, a slight amount of current is drawn, creating a voltage drop. The
current respectively drifts to the electrodes on the four corners.
Theoretically, the amount of current that drifts through the four electrodes
should be proportional to the distance from the touch point to the four
corners. The controller precisely calculates the proportion of the current
passed through the four electrodes and figures out the X/Y coordinate of a
touch point.
Capacitive touchscreen
• Characters:
1. Durable and resistant to scratches for
demanding applications
2. Faster and more responsive
3. Immune to surface contaminants
4. Superior optical clarity, brighter display and
less surface reflection
5. Must be touched by finger, will not work with
any non-conductive input
Infrared touchscreen
• Characters:
1. Clear as glass, improves reading ability
2. Most durable surface
SAW touchscreen
• Principle
Surface waves are readily absorbed
when a soft object such as a fingertip
touches the substrate.
SAW Touch Screen use pure glass
with transmitting and receiving
piezoelectric transducers for both the
X and Y axes.
The touch screen controller sends an
electrical signal to the transmitting
transducer, which converts the signal
into ultrasonic waves within the glass.
When you touch the screen, you
absorb a portion of the wave traveling
across it. The received signal is then
compared to the stored digital map,
the change recognized, and a
coordinate calculate.
SAW touchscreen
SAW touchscreen
• Characters:
1. Durable glass construction
2. High optical clarity
3. Activated by a finger, gloved hand or soft
tip
4. Not completely sealable, can be affected
by large amounts of dirt, dust, and / or
water in the environment
Technology Capacitive SAW Infrared Resistive
Touch method Human touch finger, gloved Can use any Can use any
pointing device pointing device
hand or soft tip
Multi-touch technology