An absolutely unbreakable screen for gadgets. Free Technical Library News

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Absolutely unbreakable screen for gadgets

19.09.2016

Scientists at the University of Sussex in the UK have invented a shatterproof smartphone screen made not of glass, but of a thin layer of silver nanowire. The researchers promise that the touch conductivity of such a display will be better than that of a glass one.

According to the authors of the project, the material has no scaling restrictions, so it can also be used for touch screens of laptops and TVs. The production of such displays will cost five times less than conventional ones.

Under the layer of glass of a conventional screen are electrodes that are sensitive to finger touches. They are made from indium tin oxide, a rare and expensive material. Silver nanowire offers an alternative, much stronger electrode structure. It can be subdivided into extremely small pieces - pixels - making it suitable for display industries.

Alan Dalton, professor at the University of Sussex and one of the authors of the development, says that each pixel of a conventional display is divided into sub-pixels. Usually there are three of them - for red, green and blue. Approximately the same thickness as a subpixel is a silver nanowire, which makes it possible to make screens with high resolution and makes it possible to create a layer of wire so thin that it retains transparency. At the same time, the film remains so elastic and resistant to mechanical damage that the screen becomes impossible to break.

Alternatively, you can use a hybrid of a silver nanowire and graphene - a layer of carbon atoms connected via sp2 bonds into a hexagonal two-dimensional crystal lattice. Dalton argues that other alternative materials that have previously been proposed for the production of displays either cannot compete with indium tin oxide on technical performance or are too expensive.

The most difficult task was to calculate the smallest allowable subpixel size at which the nanowire and graphene retain their properties. This was done using a mathematical method that is used to describe phase changes (for example, freezing) in ultra-small spaces.

The scientists plan to commercialize the technology with Oxford-based M-Solv UK, which specializes in laser and inkjet micromachining. The company's technical department has already made a successful attempt to incorporate the new material into a multi-touch screen that is cheaper to produce than traditional materials. If the production of 1 sq. m layer of indium oxide and tin costs 40 pounds, then 1 square. m of silver nanowire with graphene costs eight pounds. Thus, the basis for an unbreakable screen can cost several times cheaper than for a regular one.

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