The present disclosure relates to touchscreens, and particularly to a capacitive touchscreen.
Currently, capacitive touchscreens become an indispensible element of electronic products such as cellphones, tablet computers, notebook computers, and so on. In order to realize multi-point touch, common structures of the capacitive touchscreens include a single-layer bridge structure and a double-layer structure. The capacitive touchscreen with the single-layer bridge structure has a relatively complex technology, while the capacitive touchscreen with the double-layer structure has relatively large thickness due to the need of stacking. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a capacitive touchscreen with a simple technology and small thickness.
Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a capacitive touchscreen, which can solve the above technical problems.
In a first aspect, a capacitive touchscreen is provided. The capacitive touchscreen includes a substrate, a transparent and conductive layer arranged on the substrate, multiple transparent and conductive first electrodes, multiple transparent and conductive second electrodes, and multiple transparent and nonconductive patterns. The transparent and conductive layer includes a sensing area having a first side and a second side opposite to the first side. Each of the first electrodes includes a first trunk extending from the first side toward the second side. Each of the second electrodes includes a second trunk and a wiring coupled to the second trunk. The second trunk and the wiring of each of the second electrodes extend from the first side toward the second side. Each of the second trunks cooperates with a corresponding first trunk to be operable to sense a touched position. The second trunk of each second electrodes has a first end and a second end opposite to the first end. A linear distance between two first ends of two adjacent second trunks in a first direction from the first side toward the second side along a straight line is an unit length, and L is larger than 1 mm and smaller than 15 mm. The transparent and nonconductive patterns are located between the first electrodes and the second electrodes to electrically isolate the first electrodes from the second electrodes.
In a second aspect, a capacitive touchscreen is provided. The capacitive touchscreen includes a substrate, a transparent and conductive layer arranged on the substrate, multiple transparent and conductive first electrodes, multiple transparent and conductive second electrodes, and multiple transparent and nonconductive patterns. The transparent and conductive layer includes a sensing area having a first side and a second side opposite to the first side. Each of the first electrodes includes a first trunk extending from the first side toward the second side along a straight line. Each of the second electrodes includes a second trunk and a wiring coupled to the second trunk. The wiring of each of the second electrodes extend from the first side toward the second side, and the second trunk of each of the second electrodes extends from the first side toward the second side along a straight line. Each of the second trunks cooperates with a corresponding first trunk to be operable to sense a touched position. The transparent and nonconductive patterns are located between the first electrodes and the second electrodes to electrically isolate the first electrodes from the second electrodes.
In a third aspect, a capacitive touchscreen is provided. The capacitive touchscreen includes a substrate, a transparent and conductive layer arranged on the substrate, multiple transparent and conductive first electrodes, multiple transparent and conductive second electrodes, and multiple transparent and nonconductive patterns. The transparent and conductive layer includes a sensing area having a first side and a second side opposite to the first side. Each of the first electrodes includes a first trunk extending from the first side toward the second side. Each of the second electrodes includes a second trunk and a wiring coupled to the second trunk. The second trunk and the wiring of each of the second electrodes extend from the first side toward the second side. Each of the second trunks cooperates with a corresponding first trunk to be operable to sense a touched position. The transparent and nonconductive patterns are located between the first electrodes and the second electrodes to electrically isolate the first electrodes from the second electrodes. Each of the first electrodes further comprises multiple first branches extending outwardly from the first trunk of each of the first electrodes, and multiple third branches respectively extending from distal ends of the plurality of first branches in a direction from the first side toward the second side. The second trunk of each of the second electrodes is at least partially located between a corresponding third branch and a corresponding first trunk.
In the present disclosure, since one conductive layer is used to manufacture the capacitive touchscreen, the manufacturing process is simple, and the thickness is also relatively small.
The following accompanying drawings are intended to illustrate various embodiments of the present disclosure in detail in combination with specific embodiments. It is to be understood that various elements shown in the drawings are not representative of actual sizes or scaling relationship, but are merely schematic views shown for clear illustration, and shall not to be construed as limiting the present disclosure.
In order to make clearer the object, technical solutions, and advantages of the present disclosure, below the present disclosure is further described in detail in combination with the embodiments and the accompanying drawings. It shall be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely used to illustrate the present disclosure but not to limit the present disclosure.
The present disclosure provides a capacitive touchscreen and a method for manufacturing the same. In the following embodiments, the method for manufacturing the capacitive touchscreen will be first described, however, in the process of description, a structure of the capacitive touchscreen also needs to be mentioned to better explain the method for manufacturing the same. Therefore, the structure of the capacitive touchscreen will not be independently described separately from its manufacturing method in the present specification, while a person skilled in the art can clearly know the structure of the capacitive touchscreen according to the description of the manufacturing method.
Referring to
Step S10: a substrate 12 is provided. The substrate 12 may be made from a transparent material, such as glass or polyethylene terephthalate (PET), so as to facilitate manufacturing a display screen module having a touch function or other application scenarios which require transparency. When the capacitive touchscreen 10 needs to be flexible, PET can be chosen to manufacture the substrate 12. PET has advantages of good light transmittance and flexibility, easiness of manufacture, etc. In the embodiment, the thickness of the substrate 12 made from PET may be about 0.01 to 0.5 millimeter (mm), preferably, 0.015 to 0.2 mm, and more preferably 0.1 mm, and the substrate with such thicknesses has relatively good flexibility. Certainly, in other circumstances where transparency is not needed, other thicknesses also may be chosen for the substrate 12, and the substrate 12 also may be made from a non-transparent material such as metal.
Step S20: a transparent and conductive nano-silver thin film 14 having a sensing area is arranged on the substrate 12. The nano-silver thin film 14 is a thin film which includes a layer of polymer matrix having nano-silver wires, and the nano-silver wires are distributed in the thin film disorderly and uniformly, thereby enabling the thin film to be transparent and conductive. The sheet resistance of the nano-silver thin film 14 may be about 5-80 Ω/sq, which is greatly reduced compared with ITO. The nano-silver thin film 14 may be attached to the substrate 12 in a manner of coating, screen-printing, or injecting. The substrate 12 and the nano-silver thin film 14 arranged on one surface of the substrate 12 constitute basic elements of the capacitive touchscreen 10. The capacitive touchscreen 10 includes a sensing area 20 (as shown in
Step S30: laser parameters are set so that laser 11 is operable to change the nano-silver thin film 14 from being transparent and conductive to be transparent and nonconductive in a non-removal manner. The laser parameters may include pulse width, pulse flux, pulse energy, spot size, pulse repetition rate, etc. In cases where appropriate parameters are chosen, after the nano-silver thin film 14 is irradiated by the laser 11, the nano-silver in the irradiated part is changed from being conductive to be nonconductive, meanwhile, the transparency of the irradiated part almost remains unchanged, moreover, the irradiated part of the nano-silver thin film 14 is almost not peeled off. Since the above process treating the nano-silver wires is available in related art, unnecessary details will not be given herein. It shall be indicated that the delimitation of being conductive and being nonconductive is considered with respect to the fields of printed electronic devices, touch sensing, or photoelectric elements. For example, when the sheet resistance is about 30 to 250 Ω/sq, the thin film 14 may be considered as being conductive, while when the sheet resistance is about 20 MΩ/sq, the thin film 14 may be considered as being nonconductive. However, it shall be understood that in different fields, being conductive and being nonconductive may have different delimitations, and the above laser parameters shall be set according to specific application scenarios.
Step S40, movement parameters are set so that the laser is movable according to a path defined by the movement parameters. The movement parameters may include a scanning speed, a moving path, etc. The scanning speed may be 1 m/s. The moving path practically can be regarded as a pattern. After the laser is moved according to the movement parameters, a region irradiated by the laser will form the pattern. The specific shape of the moving path will be further understood from the description of the following step.
Step S50: the laser is enabled to irradiate the sensing area 20 of the nano-silver thin film 14 according to the laser parameters and the movement parameters, thereby forming nonconductive patterns 24 on the sensing area 20. A part of the nonconductive patterns 24 are shown in
Referring to
In the manufacturing process, when manufacturing the first electrodes 26 and the second electrodes 28, for example, a part of the first trunk 26a, a part of the second trunk 28a, and a part of the wiring 28b as shown in
In conventional designs, an ITO thin film has a relatively high sheet resistance, thus the sensing pattern and the overall structure of the touchscreen may be restricted. For example, a touchscreen with an OGS structure usually has a size of less than 6 inches due to the limitation of sheet resistance, and a bigger size will lead to a too high channel resistance, thereby causing problems such as poor remote performance. Compared with the conventional ITO design, the nano-silver thin film with greatly reduced sheet resistance is employed in the present disclosure, therefore, an increased design space is provided for the sensing pattern and the size of the touchscreen, and the restriction of the sheet resistance is greatly reduced.
In addition, since the sheet resistance of the nano-silver thin film 14 is low, when the nano-silver thin film 14 has the same sheet resistance as the ITO thin film, the thickness of the nano-silver thin film is much thinner, therefore, the light transmittance of the nano-silver thin film 14 is also higher. In turn, when the nano-silver thin film 14 has the same light transmittance as the ITO thin film, the sheet resistance of the nano-silver thin film 14 is much lower. Also, the flexibility of the nano-silver thin film 14 is also better than that of the ITO thin film. Furthermore, since the laser substantially travels linearly along the first direction 31 during the process of forming the nonconductive pattern 24, compared with the dense wrinkled shape in the related art, the distance that the laser travels is greatly reduced, thus improving the manufacturing efficiency.
However, it shall be understood that in other embodiments, it is not limited to the nano-silver thin film for forming the first and second electrodes, while other transparent and conductive metal thin films of nano dimension also can be used, including thin films formed by a single metal of nano dimension, alloy of nano dimension, metal compound of nano dimension, or any combination thereof. For example, apart from thin films of nano-metal wire, thin films of nano-metal particles, and thin films of nano-metal grids also can be included. Certainly, the transparent and conductive layer may be formed from a grapheme thin film, a carbon nanotube thin film, an organic conductive high-molecular polymer thin film, or any combination thereof The process for manufacturing a touchscreen using these materials is similar to the above process, which will not be described redundantly in the present disclosure. In the present disclosure, since one conductive layer is used for manufacturing the capacitive touchscreen, the manufacturing process is simple, and the thickness is relatively small.
Referring to
Referring to
It shall be indicated that in the multiple embodiments described above, the first and second directions are not limited to the vertical direction and the transverse direction perpendicular to the vertical direction as shown in the figures. In other embodiments, what is needed is that an angle is defined between the two directions.
Referring to
Within one unit length L, the first trunk 26a is bent once, i.e., it can be abstracted that the first trunk 26a is formed by two segments defining an angle therebetween, thereby forming a substantially V-shape zigzag line, and the distance between two ends forming an opening of the zigzag line is also of one unit length L. The unit length L may be larger than 1 mm and less than 15 mm, i.e., may be in a range of (1 mm, 15 mm), preferably, (3 mm, 8 mm), more preferably, (4 mm, 7 mm), further preferably, (4.5 mm, 6 mm), for example, the unit length L may be 4.7 mm, 5.0 mm, or 5.5 mm. A distance H between a highest point and a lowest point of the zigzag line in the second direction may be larger than 0 and less than 0.866 L, and preferably may be in a range of (0, 0.5 L), more preferably (0, 0.2887 L), further preferably (0, 0.134 L), for example, the distance H may be 0.088 L, or 0.044 L. An angle α defined between the segments of the zigzag line may be larger than 60 degrees and less than 180 degrees, and preferably may be in a range of (90 degrees, 180 degrees), more preferably (120 degrees, 180 degrees), further preferably (150 degrees, 180 degrees), for example, the angle α may be 160 degrees or 170 degrees. A range of a ratio λ of the total length of the segments of the zigzag line defining an angle therebetween to the unit length L may be larger than 1 and less than 2, preferably may be in a range of (1, 1.414), more preferably (1, 1.15), further preferably (1, 1.035), for example, the ratio λ may be 1.015 or 1.004. Each second trunk 28a and each wiring 28b abut against the first trunk 26a or the third branch 26c which are close thereto, thereby also being slightly bent state similar to the first trunk 26a, rather than a linear line.
It shall be indicated that the slightly bent state indicated in the sixth embodiment is also available for the above first to fourth embodiments, and a person skilled in the art can alter the above embodiments under the teaching of the sixth embodiment to also realize the slightly bent state; besides, the bending also may be unsymmetrical within the unit length L indicated in the figure, which will not be unnecessarily listed herein in detail.
Moreover, as to the shapes of the first and second electrodes, a person skilled in the art shall understand that there also may be other different embodiments, for example, spiral shape, and it is also impossible to enumerate them in the present application. However, according to the description of the above embodiments, a person skilled in the art shall understand that it falls within the scope of protection of the capacitive touchscreen and the manufacturing method thereof of the present disclosure, as long as the method for manufacturing the capacitive touchscreen includes: providing a substrate; arranging a transparent and conductive nano-silver thin film having a sensing area on the substrate, the sensing area having a first side and a second side opposite to the first side; setting laser parameters so that laser is operable to change the transparent and conductive nano-silver thin film to be transparent and nonconductive in a non removal manner; setting movement parameters so that the laser is movable according to a path defined by the movement parameters; and enabling the laser to irradiate the sensing area to form nonconductive patterns in the sensing area, according to the laser parameters and the movement parameters, multiple transparent and conductive first electrodes and second electrodes being formed on the sensing area due to the nonconductive patterns isolating the first electrodes from the second electrodes, and other steps. Each of the first electrodes includes a first trunk extending from the first side toward the second side. Each of the second electrodes includes a second trunk and a wiring coupled to the second trunk, both the second trunk and the wiring extend from the first side toward the second side, and each of the second trunks cooperates with a corresponding first trunk to be operable to sense a touched position A person skilled in the art shall understand that it falls within the scope of protection of the capacitive touchscreen and the manufacturing method thereof of the present disclosure, as long as the capacitive touchscreen includes: a substrate and a nano-silver thin film arranged on the substrate, where the nano-silver thin film includes a sensing area having a first side and a second side opposite to the first side. The sensing area further includes multiple transparent and conductive first electrodes and second electrodes, and transparent and nonconductive patterns located between the first and second electrodes to electrically isolate the first electrodes and second electrodes. Each of the first electrodes includes a first trunk extending from the first side toward the second side. Each of the second electrodes includes a second trunk and a wiring coupled to the second trunk, both the second trunk and the wiring extend from the first side toward the second side, and each of the second trunks cooperates with a corresponding first trunk to be operable to sense a touched position in tandem with the corresponding first trunk.
Preferably, the nano-silver thin film 14 further includes a lead area 22 located at the periphery of the sensing area 20 as shown in
Step S45: the laser is enabled to irradiate the lead area 22 according to the laser parameters and the movement parameters, thereby forming on the lead area multiple first leads (not indicated) respectively and electrically coupled to the first trunk 26a, and second leads (not indicated) respectively and electrically coupled to the wirings 28b. The laser first starts to irradiate the nano-silver thin film 14 from the lead area 22 along the first direction, and directly enters the sensing area 22, so that the first lead and the corresponding first trunk 26a, and the second lead and the corresponding wiring 28b are fabricated in one time by the laser. Thus, in the process of manufacturing the whole capacitive touchscreen, the lead area and the sensing area of the touchscreen do not need to be manufactured through two processes as in the related art, but only one manufacturing process with the laser is needed, improving the manufacturing efficiency. This preferred step is used in the above first to sixth embodiments.
The above-mentioned descriptions are merely for preferable embodiments of the present disclosure and not used to limit the present disclosure. Any modifications, equivalent substitutions, improvements and so on, made within the spirit and principle of the present disclosure, shall be covered by the scope of protection of the present disclosure.
The present disclosure is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 15/548,913, filed Aug. 4, 2017, which claims priority to PCT Patent Application No. PCT/CN2015/072450, filed on Feb. 6, 2015, which disclosures are hereby incorporated by reference in its entireties.
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
Parent | 15548913 | Aug 2017 | US |
Child | 16427974 | US |