Physics Behind Touchscreens

PHYSICS BEHIND TOUCHSCREENS
BY K. SAI MRUDULA SREE

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WHAT IS A TOUCHSCREEN?
• A touchscreen is a type of display that can detect

touch input from a user. It consists of both
an input device (a touch panel) and an output
device (a visual display). The touch panel is
typically layered on the top of the electronic
visual display of a device and The display is often
an LCD, AMOLED or OLED display.
• Touchscreens are commonly found
in smartphones, laptops, tablets and other
electronic devices.
APPLICATIONS OF TOUCHSCREEN
• Communication aids in speech therapy

• Education, making learning more interactive, engaging, and fun,
particularly for young children
• Healthcare, used in patient monitoring systems, simplifying data
collection and visualization
• Smartphones and tablets
• Point-of-sale terminals, such as those found in retail stores and
restaurants
HOW DOES A TOUCHSCREEN WORK?
• Touchscreens work using electricity and light-emitting diodes
(LEDs) to produce images.
• The screen is made of glass and the surface of the screen is coated
with a thin layer of an electrically conducting material such as
indium tin oxide.
• The conducting layer is connected to a low voltage so that for a
short time, there is a tiny electric current on the screen.
• This leaves it with a small electric charge.
• When your finger touches the screen, some of the small electrical
charge flows on to it.
• Sensitive detectors round the edge of the screen can detect which
point on the screen has lost charge so that it knows which point has
been touched.
• When your finger touches the screen, some of the small electrical
charge flows on to it.
WHY THE TOUCHSCREENS CANNOT BE
OPERATED BY WEARING GLOVES
• If you are wearing gloves the screen won’t respond because the material of gloves
is an insulator. That’s why special gloves are sold which have electrically
conducting fingertips for people who need to keep their hands warm when using a
touchscreen.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS
INVOLVED IN TOUCHSCREEN
• Resistive touchscreen
• Capacitive touchscreen
• Surface acoustic wave touchscreen
• Infrared touchscreen
RESISTIVE SYSTEM:
• The resistive system consists of a normal glass panel that is covered with a conductive
and a resistive metallic layer.
• These two layers are held apart by spacers, and a scratch-resistant layer is placed on top
of the whole setup.
• An electrical current runs through the two layers while the monitor is operational.
• When a user touches the screen, the two layers make contact in that exact spot.
• The change in the electrical field is noted and the coordinates of the point of contact are
calculated by the computer.
• Once the coordinates are known, a special driver translates the touch into something
that the operating system can understand, much as a computer mouse driver translates a
mouse's movements into a click or a drag.
CAPACITIVE SYSTEM
• In the capacitive system, a layer that stores electrical charge is placed on the glass
panel of the monitor.
• When a user touches the monitor with his or her finger, some of the charge is transferred
to the user, so the charge on the capacitive layer decreases.
• This decrease is measured in circuits located at each corner of the monitor.
• The computer calculates, from the relative differences in charge at each corner, exactly
where the touch event took place and then relays that information to the touch-screen
driver software.
• One advantage that the capacitive system has over the resistive system is that it transmits
almost 90 percent of the light from the monitor, whereas the resistive system only
transmits about 75 percent.
• This gives the capacitive system a much clearer picture than the resistive system.
SURFACE ACOUSTIC WAVE SYSTEM
• On the monitor of a surface acoustic wave system, two transducers (one

receiving and one sending) are placed along the x and y axes of the monitor's glass
plate.
• Also placed on the glass are reflectors -- they reflect an electrical signal sent from
one transducer to the other.
• The receiving transducer is able to tell if the wave has been disturbed by a touch
event at any instant, and can locate it accordingly.
• The wave setup has no metallic layers on the screen, allowing for 100-percent
light throughput and perfect image clarity.
• This makes the surface acoustic wave system best for displaying detailed graphics
INFRARED TOUCHSCREENS
• . While infrared touchscreens can be used with gloves on, they don't support multi-touch and
have slow response times.
• As the name suggests, infrared touchscreens use infrared light to register a touch.
• Infrared LEDs line two of the display's edges (one vertical and one horizontal), and the other
two edges are lined with light sensors.
• Each LED corresponds to a sensor on an infrared touchscreen, and infrared light is constantly
beamed to the sensors.
• Once you put your finger on the display, you block the light from hitting some of the sensors.
• No matter where you put your finger, you will be blocking light from both an X-axis sensor
and a Y-axis sensor.
• Using this information, the display can pinpoint where the finger is pressed down.
ADVANTAGES OF TOUCHSCREENS
• The great thing about touchscreen technology is that it's incredibly easy for people to use.
• Touchscreens can display just as much information (and just as many touch buttons) as
people need to complete a particular task and no more, leading people through quite a
complex process in a very simple, systematic way.
• That's why touchscreen technology has proved perfect for public information kiosks,
ticket machines at railroad stations, electronic voting machines, self-service grocery
checkouts, military computers, and many similar applications where computers with
screens and keyboards would be too troublesome to use.

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PHYSICS BEHIND TOUCHSCREENS

BY K. SAI MRUDULA SREE

• A touchscreen is a type of display that can detect

• Communication aids in speech therapy

• On the monitor of a surface acoustic wave system, two transducers (one

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