One Glass Solution (OGS) is a
touchscreen
A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, 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 l ...
technology which reduces the thickness of a display by removing one of the layers of
glass
Glass is an amorphous (non-crystalline solid, non-crystalline) solid. Because it is often transparency and translucency, transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window pane ...
from the traditional capacitive touchscreen stack. The basic idea is to replace the touch module glass with a thin layer of insulating material. In general, there are two ways to achieve this.
One approach to OGS is called "sensor-on-lens” (also known as “touch-on-lens” or “sensor-on-glass”), with the "lens" in this case referring to the cover glass layer. Next, a layer of
indium tin oxide
Indium tin oxide (ITO) is a ternary composition of indium, tin and oxygen in varying proportions. Depending on the oxygen content, it can be described as either a ceramic or an alloy. Indium tin oxide is typically encountered as an oxygen-saturate ...
(ITO) is deposited onto the back of the cover glass in a pattern to create
electrodes
An electrode is an electrical conductor used to make contact with a nonmetallic part of a circuit (e.g. a semiconductor, an electrolyte, a vacuum or a gas). In electrochemical cells, electrodes are essential parts that can consist of a variety ...
to sense touch. A thin
insulator layer is applied before a second ITO layer is deposited in a pattern creating electrodes running at right angles to the first layer. The assembly is then laminated onto a standard
LCD
A liquid-crystal display (LCD) is a flat-panel display or other electronically modulated optical device that uses the light-modulating properties of liquid crystals combined with polarizers to display information. Liquid crystals do not em ...
panel.
The second approach is called "on-cell" capacitive touchscreen, with the cell referring to the LCD. In this process, a conductive layer of ITO is deposited directly onto the top layer of glass in the LCD panel in an electrode pattern. A thin insulating layer is applied before a second ITO layer is deposited in a pattern creating electrodes running at right angles to the first layer. Finally, a
polarizing layer is applied on top, and the display is completed by adding the cover glass.
For now, it appears that the sensor-on-lens approach has advantages over on-cell solutions. The on-cell approach means that LCD makers would have to make two separate models of each panel: one with touch and one without. This could add cost to an industry that is already running on thin margins. The on-cell touch method is also limited to the size of the LCD panel, whereas sensor-on-lens modules can be larger than the underlying LCD panel, providing room for dedicated touch points that are found on many smartphone designs. Due to how sensor-on-lens modules are manufactured, the sensors are very fragile in comparison to on-cell modules. Damage to the cover glass will also impair the functionality of the touchscreen.
Successor
Its successor is "in-cell" touch panels, where one of the conductive layers actually shares the same layer as the thin film transistors (TFTs) used to switch the display's sub-pixels on and off. (These transistors are fabricated directly on the semiconductor backplane of the display). The first products using "in-cell" touch technology have already (As of November 2012) appeared on the market, such as the
Apple iPhone 5,
,
vivo X3S.
References
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Touchscreens