Category Archives: Touch Technologies

C3Nano, Inc., a developer and supplier of solution-based, transparent conductive inks and films announced today that it has entered into a partnership with Kimoto, Ltd. Japan. This alliance has important commercial implications for the future of the display and touch sensor industry. The two companies will cooperate in delivering transparent conductive films into the fast-growing flexible display and touch sensor market.

As a global market leader in roll-to-roll, hard-coated films for the display and touch panel industry, Kimoto, Ltd. offers a wide variety of innovative products to protect and optimize the use of devices in touch screens and display applications.  “Our company is excited to have a great partner such as Kimoto to collaborate with, especially since they are the industry leader in hard-coated films,” said Cliff Morris, CEO of C3Nano, Inc.

“This alliance responds to the industry’s unmet need to deliver 50 Ohms per square films at far less than 1 percent haze.  We can deliver that product today at high volume.”

As a result of this relationship, C3Nano is positioned to be a complete solution provider to the flexible display, touch panel, and OLED industries.

Founded in 2010 as a spinout from Professor Zhenan Bao’s chemical engineering laboratory at Stanford University, C3Nano is the developer of the solution-based, transparent conductive inks and films as direct replacements for indium tin oxide (ITO).  C3Nano has raised more than $20 million in funding to date, which has enabled the company to quickly achieve ink formulations and expanded production capabilities.

Kimoto, headquartered in Saitama, Japan, is a developer of processing optical hard-coated films for the display, touch and auto industries.  Their films are used in the production of many high quality displays and touch panels used in mobile phones, tablets, computers and navigation systems.

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Spansion, Inc. yesterday announced that they have closed the merger of the two companies in an all-stock, tax-free transaction valued at approximately $5 billion. In a special meeting earlier today, Cypress shareholders approved the issuance of 2.457 shares of Cypress stock to Spansion shareholders for each Spansion share they own. Spansion shareholders approved the merger in a separate special meeting. The merger is expected to achieve more than $135 million in cost synergies on an annualized basis within three years and to be accretive to non-GAAP earnings within the first full year after the transaction closes. The combined company will continue to pay $0.11 per share in quarterly dividends to shareholders.

Cypress President and CEO T.J. Rodgers is scheduled to talk about the merger live on the Fox Business News program, “Opening Bell,” hosted by Maria Bartiromo, Friday morning at 7:30 a.m. PDT. A four-minute video of Rodgers and Spansion CEOJohn Kispert, describing the synergies of the merger and benefits for Cypress and Spansion customers, is available on the Cypress website atwww.cypress.com/NewCypress.

“We closed this merger even more quickly than originally anticipated, accelerating our strategic and financial roadmap,” Rodgers said. “From Day One, the new Cypress will capitalize on its expanded product portfolio and leadership positions in embedded processing and specialized memories to significantly extend its penetration of global markets such as automotive, industrial, consumer, wearable electronics and the Internet of Things.”

“Consider the automotive market, where Cypress has a dominant position in capacitive touch-sensing controllers and SRAMs for infotainment systems, and Spansion is the leading supplier of flash memory and microcontrollers for infotainment, body and climate control systems, instrument clusters and advanced driver assistance systems,” Rodgers said. “The new Cypress will be the No. 3 chip supplier worldwide of memories and microcontrollers to this business. You can think of the post-merger company truly in terms of the well-known equation: 1 + 1 = 3: No. 1 in SRAMs, No. 1 in NOR flash and No. 3 overall.”

“Spansion’s exceptional team and technology leadership in high-performance memory and MCUs will complement Cypress’s strong capabilities. This merger was an important step forward in Spansion’s transformation into a global embedded systems leader,” said Kispert, CEO of Spansion and a member of the Cypress board of directors. “Together, we can significantly enhance our value to our customers and deliver a more robust and broader product line to meet their embedded requirements.”

Cypress Semiconductor Corp., in conjunction with its strategic partner IDEX ASA, today introduced a fingerprint reader solution designed to bring reliable, easy-to-use user authentication to smartphones, tablets, wearables and other mobile devices. The TrueTouch Fingerprint Reader uses proprietary sensing circuitry and a unique touch sensor design to provide best-in-class fingerprint image quality and pattern matching accuracy—improving security and delivering a superior user experience. The flexible solution enables designers to create custom home buttons with specialized shapes and sizes or to integrate the sensor into any mobile device’s industrial design or home button.

Consumers have increasingly embraced fingerprint readers as an alternative to keying in complex usernames, PINs and passwords. Mobile device OEMs and companies that sell via the Internet have gravitated toward the technology as the most secure way to validate a user’s identity. Demand for fingerprint readers in mobile devices is forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 47 percent through 2019, reaching annual shipments of more than 700 million units.

Cypress will showcase its TrueTouch Fingerprint Reader, along with its extensive portfolio of capacitive touchscreen and touch-sensing solutions, at Mobile World Congress 2015 from March 2-5 in Hall 2, Stand 2C26MR at Fira Gran Via in Barcelona.

TrueTouch Fingerprint Reader block diagram

“The barriers to entry are considerable in the emerging market for fingerprint readers, in part because of the highly specialized IP and complete solution that is required to compete,” said T.J. Rodgers, President and CEO of Cypress. “Our relationship with IDEX will enable us to provide our top-tier mobile customers with a globally deployable fingerprint sensing solution, including a sensor, Android drivers and a software stack. With our industry-leading CapSense capacitive touch-sensing controllers, and our TrueTouch touchscreen solutions, Cypress will have an unmatched portfolio for mobile user interfaces.”

“We are extremely pleased with the performance of our new generation touch sensor developed in record time through our partnership with Cypress,” said Dr. Hemant Mardia, CEO of IDEX ASA. “The combination of IDEX’s breakthrough imaging performance, matching algorithm and patented sensor IP with Cypress’s award-winning programmable system-on-chip technology delivers best in class fingerprint matching. This product has been designed based on fundamentally new technology to meet our OEM customers’ demands for usability and security strength from small touch sensors.”

Even as smartphone panel resolution continues to rise, and as display sizes continue to grow, panel manufacturers are facing pressure to reduce prices. According to the Quarterly Mobile Phone Display Shipment and Forecast Report from IHS, a global source of critical information and insight, total mobile phone display shipments are estimated to reach a new record high of 2 billion units in 2014. Average smartphone display prices declined nearly 14 percent year-over-year (YoY) from $22 per module in 2013 to $19 in 2014. IHS Technology forecasts another double-digit fall for smartphone display prices in 2015, resulting in a blended ASP of about $17.

“While smartphone display resolution and sizes reach new milestones, panel makers are still being challenged to reduce display module prices,” said Terry Yu, analyst for small and medium displays and display technologies for IHS Technology, formerly with DisplaySearch. “Shipment and manufacturing of panels using various display technologies like a-Si, Oxide, LTPS and AMOLED continues to rise, while pricing continues to decline. The sharpest smartphone average panel price declines occurred in 2014, and this trend of double-digit declines is expected to continue in 2015.”

Panel makers (like Tianma, BOE, InfoVision, and Japan Display Inc. (JDI) via their subsidiary TDI) are all promoting their products to Chinese smartphone makers with aggressive pricing strategies. Chinese smartphone makers are agile enough to use economies of scale and their strong market position to better negotiate display prices. On the supply side, LTPS LCD manufacturing capacity is increasing in all regions. Taiwanese panel suppliers are aggressively shifting production of smartphone panels to Gen 5 fabs, as well. These factors are adding pressure to reduce prices.

According to the Monthly Smartphone and Tablet PC FPD Pricing Report, 5-inch LTPS TFT LCD FHD (1920×1080) smartphone panels with IPS/FFS LCD technology, experienced a decline of 30 percent YoY, from $30 in December 2013 to $21 in December 2014. “Smartphone ASPs will continue to drop substantially in the first quarter of 2015, which is a traditionally slow season for smartphone display panel purchasing,” Yu said.

ihs smartphone displays

The 5-inch 720 HD (1280×720 pixels) module is the most popular smartphone display size in China, helping the format to gain over 40 percent market share in the market global 5.x-inch space during 2014. “Most brands are promoting low-priced, high-specification models with these displays, especially on e-commerce platforms,” Yu said. “China is the major battlefield for 5-inch smartphone displays. Demand for these displays is very strong, but they face strong competitive price pressure in the set market.”

In China’s open market, prices for 5-inch 720HD panels declined significantly to just under $12 in December 2014. Business agreements aside, market pricing for low-specification 5.x-inch panels is expected to decline to about $11 by March 2015. Prices of some low-grade specifications panels (lower brightness requirement) could decline to below $10 by the same period.

Due to the booming demand for LTPS LCD in China, panel makers are expected to continue expanding their LTPS manufacturing capacities & shipment.

“By the end of 2016, new fab investments by AUO, BOE, China Star, Tianma, and Foxconn will result in at least five Gen 6 LTPS fabs running in China and Taiwan, which may induce more pressure to reduce smartphone ASPs in the future,” Yu said.

Another price-reduction pressure in the smartphone display market comes from aggressive smartphone end-market pricing by Chinese smartphone brands. According to the Monthly Smartphone and Tablet PC FPD Pricing Report, after the introduction of the iPhone 6 Plus with its 5.5-inch FHD display, more Android-based premium models are expected to come equipped with wide-quad high-definition (WQHD) (2560×1440) displays driving FHD models down into the mid-range segment with lower pricing.

On December 23, 2014, Meizu, a rising brand in China, introduced its new “No Blue Note” smartphone, which was equipped with a 5.5-inch FHD display from Taiwan, which sells for just CNY 999 ($161). This model and pricing has been cited by many in the industry as a warning for upcoming price competition in 2015. “Facing ASP pressures, display cost reduction will be the top priority for the panel makers, especially through more effective production yield rate management and improvements in component performance,” Yu said.

The announcement by GTAT and Apple in late 2013 of a more than $1 billion combined investment to set up the largest sapphire crystal growth facility in the world had raised hopes that adoption of sapphire in smartphones would rapidly reach a massive scale, with Apple setting up the pace and forcing its competitor to follow suit. Various second tier cell phone OEM upped their efforts in sapphire-related developments and tried to beat Apple by announcing or introducing smartphone models with sapphire display covers ahead of the highly anticipated iPhone 6 announcement. This prompted various sapphire manufacturers in China to announce plans for significant capacity increases to serve this new market.

“After a 2014 year full of hopes, the sapphire industry is entering 2015 with a lots of uncertainties,” analyzes Dr Eric Virey, Senior, Technology & Market Analyst, Yole Développement (Yole). “Following a long period of depressed pricings and stagnating revenue, 2014 started with a welcome price recovery that lifted up the spirit of many industry players. But most of all, it was the prospect of a new killer application that had given reasons for optimism,” he adds.

But the news that the iPhone 6 would not use a sapphire display cover, shortly followed by GTAT bankruptcy sent shockwaves in the industry and raised many questions:

  • Is Apple still interested in sapphire and will the display cover glass opportunity ever materialize in a large scale?
  • Is the technology ready?
  • What will happen to the more than 2000 high capacity furnaces installed by GTAT and Apple?
  • Are other cell phone OEM still considering sapphire?
  • Can traditional applications such as LED or watch windows sustain more than 100 manufacturers?
  • Could other applications emerge soon? If not how will consolidation affect the industry?
  • Will China eventually dominate the sapphire industry?

GTAT and Apple

Yole analysts have been tracking the sapphire market for more than a decade. Their analysis is presented in the yearly technology & market analysis: Sapphire Applications & Market: from LED to Consumer Electronic and Sapphire Applications, Touch screens, displays, semiconductor, defense and consumer.

“The last 6 month events are shaking the sapphire industry,” comments Eric Virey from Yole. He adds: “Today, several points remain under questions: is the display cover application dead on arrival? What is Apple’s strategy regarding sapphire? Can the market absorb the more than 2000 high capacity GTAT furnaces now for sale.”

Under this context, Yole, the “More Than Moore” market research, technology and strategy consulting company, proposes to exchange and debate during the 1st International Forum on Sapphire Market & Technologies, on September 3rd, 2015. This Forum is hosted by CIOE. It will take place in Shenzhen, alongside the 17th China International Optoelectronic Expo 2015.

Both partners have set up a high added-value program including sessions on: sapphire market, technologies and supply chain – established and emerging sapphire applications – crystal growth – manufacturing technologies… The forum will wrap up with a round table with leading industry players and experts to discuss the future of sapphire technologies and markets.

“This 1st International Forum on Sapphire Market & Technologies is a must for all sapphire industry managers as well as for sapphire users in order to network and learn about all the latest industry trends,” comments Eric Virey.

The Yole & CIOE sapphire forum will bring together a world class panel of experts. It will allow participants to get valuable insights into the status and future of the sapphire industry. Moreover, the Forum will provide unprecedented opportunities for meetings with industry leaders.

With its high electrical conductivity and optical transparency, indium tin oxide is one of the most widely used materials for touchscreens, plasma displays, and flexible electronics. But its rapidly escalating price has forced the electronics industry to search for other alternatives.

One potential and more cost-effective alternative is a film made with silver nanowires–wires so extremely thin that they are one-dimensional–embedded in flexible polymers. Like indium tin oxide, this material is transparent and conductive. But development has stalled because scientists lack a fundamental understanding of its mechanical properties.

Now Horacio Espinosa, the James N. and Nancy J. Farley Professor in Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering, has led research that expands the understanding of silver nanowires’ behavior in electronics.

Espinosa and his team investigated the material’s cyclic loading, which is an important part of fatigue analysis because it shows how the material reacts to fluctuating loads of stress.

“Cyclic loading is an important material behavior that must be investigated for realizing the potential applications of using silver nanowires in electronics,” Espinosa said. “Knowledge of such behavior allows designers to understand how these conductive films fail and how to improve their durability.”

By varying the tension on silver nanowires thinner than 120 nanometers and monitoring their deformation with electron microscopy, the research team characterized the cyclic mechanical behavior. They found that permanent deformation was partially recoverable in the studied nanowires, meaning that some of the material’s defects actually self-healed and disappeared upon cyclic loading. These results indicate that silver nanowires could potentially withstand strong cyclic loads for long periods of time, which is a key attribute needed for flexible electronics.

“These silver nanowires show mechanical properties that are quite unexpected,” Espinosa said. “We had to develop new experimental techniques to be able to measure this novel material property.”

The findings were recently featured on the cover of the journal Nano Letters. Other Northwestern coauthors on the paper are Rodrigo Bernal, a recently graduated PhD student in Espinosa’s lab, and Jiaxing Huang, associate professor of materials science and engineering in McCormick.

“The next step is to understand how this recovery influences the behavior of these materials when they are flexed millions of times,” said Bernal, first author of the paper.

SmartKem, a supplier of high performance semiconductor materials for the manufacture of truly flexible displays and electronics, has announced the opening of a new thin-film-transistor (TFT) fabrication and testing facility at the company’s Manchester site – doubling the size of the company.

The expansion is set to provide comprehensive support to product development agreements, allowing partners to rapidly develop market-driven, flexible TFT-based products for applications in the display, touchscreen and sensor industries.

Together with the company’s organic synthesis technology and material formulation laboratories the center will offer complete turn-key support for its ground-breaking tru-FLEX technology platform in the development of flexible electronics applications. This will provide partners with additional services across the value chain from material synthesises, formulation and validation of the technology in transistor, circuit or end product form.

The new facility offers TFT device modelling, device stack design and a complete TFT fabrication suite including coating and evaporation equipment as well as a comprehensive test suite for device and circuit characterization including a semi-automated probe station. This not only augments SmartKem’s internal development work, but offers its customers comprehensive support in the rapid development of market driven flexible TFT-based products for application to the display, touchscreen and sensor industry.

The expansion and significant capital investment follows the recent Series A funding from a syndicate of leading investors including Finance Wales, BASF Venture Capital, Entrepreneurs Fund and Octopus Investments. Together with the creation of this new device facility expansion, SmartKem will also be increasing the size of its team by 30 percent with new members joining the synthesis, formulations and device technology groups.

Steve Kelly, Chief Executive of SmartKem, commented: “We are delighted with the speed with which we’ve managed to turn around the installation and commissioning of the new device facility. This is the final piece of the development cycle to bring in-house and the timing could not be better. We are seeing positive traction in the market for flexible electronics across the board from our core market of flexible AMOLED and EPD backplane drivers as well as many new and exciting applications. With the combined market for flexible display and electronics set to top $50 billion in the next 5 years, we are in great shape to continue to supply SmartKem tru-FLEX into new products and satisfy the growing market demand.”

Canatu, a manufacturer of zero reflectance and flexible transparent conductive films and touch sensors, today launched CNB In-Mold Film, a stretchable, formable, conductive film optimized for 3D formed capacitive touch displays and touch surfaces in automobile center consoles and dashboards, home appliance control panels, remote controls, smartwatches and portable electronic devices.

“Touch has recently become the dominant user interface for tablets, smartphones and other consumer products. One of the remaining challenges for product designers is to build touch sensors into formed or back-molded plastic parts,” said Dr. Erkki Soininen, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Canatu. “This is especially challenging when those parts involve 3D-shaped curved surfaces. Canatu now has a solution to this design challenge. CNB In-Mold touch sensors free user-interface designers from the flat-surface paradigm, making responsive touch on 3D surfaces a reality.”

CNB In-Mold Film is stretchable up to and beyond 100% and can be easily formed and back-molded using standard industrial processes such as Film Insert Molding (FIM). This means that CNB touch sensors can be produced in almost any shape, from smooth spherical domes to sharp edged casings with recesses and bulges.

With CNB In-Mold-based touch sensors, mechanical buttons in automotive dashboards, portable and wearable devices, washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, ovens and other appliances can be replaced with a robust water- and dust-proof 3D-formed touch user interface.

CNB In-Mold Film-based touch sensors give original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and system integrators the means to build transparent touch on 3D formed devices.

University of Utah engineers have developed a new type of carbon nanotube material for handheld sensors that will be quicker and better at sniffing out explosives, deadly gases and illegal drugs.

A carbon nanotube is a cylindrical material that is a hexagonal or six-sided array of carbon atoms rolled up into a tube. Carbon nanotubes are known for their strength and high electrical conductivity and are used in products from baseball bats and other sports equipment to lithium-ion batteries and touchscreen computer displays.

Ling Zang, a University of Utah professor of materials science and engineering, holds a prototype detector that uses a new type of carbon nanotube material for use in handheld scanners to detect explosives, toxic chemicals and illegal drugs. Zang and colleagues developed the new material, which will make such scanners quicker and more sensitive than today's standard detection devices. Ling's spinoff company, Vaporsens, plans to produce commercial versions of the new kind of scanner early next year. Credit: Dan Hixon, University of Utah College of Engineering.

Ling Zang, a University of Utah professor of materials science and engineering, holds a prototype detector that uses a new type of carbon nanotube material for use in handheld scanners to detect explosives, toxic chemicals and illegal drugs. Zang and colleagues developed the new material, which will make such scanners quicker and more sensitive than today’s standard detection devices. Ling’s spinoff company, Vaporsens, plans to produce commercial versions of the new kind of scanner early next year.
Credit: Dan Hixon, University of Utah College of Engineering.

Vaporsens, a university spin-off company, plans to build a prototype handheld sensor by year’s end and produce the first commercial scanners early next year, says co-founder Ling Zang, a professor of materials science and engineering and senior author of a study of the technology published online Nov. 4 in the journal Advanced Materials.

The new kind of nanotubes also could lead to flexible solar panels that can be rolled up and stored or even “painted” on clothing such as a jacket, he adds.

Zang and his team found a way to break up bundles of the carbon nanotubes with a polymer and then deposit a microscopic amount on electrodes in a prototype handheld scanner that can detect toxic gases such as sarin or chlorine, or explosives such as TNT.

When the sensor detects molecules from an explosive, deadly gas or drugs such as methamphetamine, they alter the electrical current through the nanotube materials, signaling the presence of any of those substances, Zang says.

“You can apply voltage between the electrodes and monitor the current through the nanotube,” says Zang, a professor with USTAR, the Utah Science Technology and Research economic development initiative. “If you have explosives or toxic chemicals caught by the nanotube, you will see an increase or decrease in the current.”

By modifying the surface of the nanotubes with a polymer, the material can be tuned to detect any of more than a dozen explosives, including homemade bombs, and about two-dozen different toxic gases, says Zang. The technology also can be applied to existing detectors or airport scanners used to sense explosives or chemical threats.

Zang says scanners with the new technology “could be used by the military, police, first responders and private industry focused on public safety.”

Unlike the today’s detectors, which analyze the spectra of ionized molecules of explosives and chemicals, the Utah carbon-nanotube technology has four advantages:

  • It is more sensitive because all the carbon atoms in the nanotube are exposed to air, “so every part is susceptible to whatever it is detecting,” says study co-author Ben Bunes, a doctoral student in materials science and engineering.
  • It is more accurate and generates fewer false positives, according to lab tests.
  • It has a faster response time. While current detectors might find an explosive or gas in minutes, this type of device could do it in seconds, the tests showed.
  • It is cost-effective because the total amount of the material used is microscopic.

Until now, if you want to print a greeting card for a loved one, you can use colorful graphics, fancy typefaces or special paper to enhance it. But what if you could integrate paper-thin displays into the cards, which could be printed at home and which would be able to depict self-created symbols or even react to touch? Those only some of the options computer scientists in Saarbrücken can offer.

They developed an approach that in the future will enable laypeople to print displays in any desired shape on various materials and therefore could change everyday life completely.

For example: A postcard depicts an antique car. If you press a button, the back axle and the steering wheel rim light up in the same color. Two segments on a flexible display, which have the same shape as those parts of the car, can realize this effect. Computer scientists working with Jürgen Steimle printed the post card using an off-the-shelf inkjet printer. It is electro-luminescent: If it is connected to electric voltage, it emits light. This effect is also used to light car dashboards at night.

Steimle is leader of the research group “Embodied Interaction” at the Cluster of Excellence “Multimodal Computing and Interaction”. Simon Olberding is one of his researchers. “Until now, this was not possible”, explains Olberding. “Displays were mass-produced, they were inflexible, they always had a rectangular shape.” Olberding and Steimle want to change that. The process they developed works as follows: The user designs a digital template with programs like Microsoft Word or Powerpoint for the display he wants to create. By using the methods the computer scientists from Saarbrücken developed, called “Screen Printing” and “Conductive Inkjet Printing”, the user can print those templates. Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses, but a single person can use them within either a few minutes or two to four hours. The printing results are relatively high-resolution displays with a thickness of only 0.1 millimeters. It costs around €20 to print on a DIN A4 page; the most expensive part is the special ink. Since the method can be used to print on materials like paper, synthetic material, leather, pottery, stone, metal and even wood, two-dimensional and even three-dimensional shapes can be realized. Their depiction can either consist of one segment (surface, shape, pattern, raster graphics), several segments or variously built-up matrixes. “We can even print touch-sensitive displays”, says Olberding.

The possibilities for the user are various: displays can be integrated into almost every object in daily life – users can print not only on paper objects, but also on furniture or decorative accessories, bags or wearable items. For example, the strap of a wristwatch could be upgraded so that it lights up if a text message is received. “If we combine our approach with 3D printing, we can print three-dimensional objects that display information and are touch-sensitive”, explains Steimle.