What are the alternative materials for ITO in touch screen industry?

Touch screens are nothing new. They can be used in mobile phones, wearables, smart homes and many other consumer electronics.  You can't talk about touch screens without ITO.  In chemistry, ITO stands for Indium Tin Oxides, or Indium tin-doped Oxides.  It is a transparent conductor, commonly used in liquid crystal display (LCD), plasma display (PDP), electroluminescent display (EL/OLED), Touch screen (Touch Panel) transparent electrode.

However, with the development of consumer electronics, the demand for flexible displays is growing, and traditional ITO films cannot be used for flexible applications. Therefore, many manufacturers have started to research ITO alternatives, including silver nanowires, metal grids and graphene.

Nano silver wire  

SNW (Silver Nanowire) technology is to smear the ink material of silver nanowire on plastic or glass substrate, and then use laser lithography technology to depict the transparent conductive film with the pattern of silver nanowire conductive network.  

1. Although the cost of raw materials is slightly higher, the manufacturing process is simple and the overall cost is controllable;  

2. The resistance change rate of nano-silver wire is small when bending, which is more suitable for curved surface display equipment;  

3. The silver nanowires can achieve higher light transmittance due to their smaller wire width.

Metal grid  

The conductive Metal Mesh pattern formed by pressing on PET and other plastic films is called Metal Mesh by using Metal materials such as silver and copper or materials such as oxides that are readily available and inexpensive.  

1. Its advantage lies in its low impedance (less than 10 ohms);  

2. Capital expenditure is very low;  

3. The manufacturing cost is slightly lower than ITO;  

4. Better transparency than ITO;  

5. High deflection.

Graphene  

Graphene's high optical transparency and electron mobility make it a very suitable material for photoelectric applications.  However, the application of graphene as a transparent electrode has been greatly affected by the immaturity of the technology.  

1. with high optical transparency and electron mobility  

2. through doping to increase the number of available charge carriers, improve its overall performance as an electrode