A group of physicists working in the University of Sussex recently opened up about advanced stage of an alternative touchscreen technology that is capable of overcoming the present day drawbacks of customary display screens, tablet, and phone materials that are compelled to rely on Indium Tin Oxide based electrodes (ITO). They showcased that not only the material is perfect for touchscreens but these can also help in creation very minute pixels (patterns) that can sustain in the high definition LCD screens like the coming generation computer screens and TV sets and other kinds of smartphones.

This experiment was led by Alan Dalton, the Sussex based professor of Experimental Physics. He looked deeper into some complexities related to silver nanowires film patterns that can generate highly detailed electrode structures. In his previous research he showed that the silver nanowires are capable of not only matching the conductivities and transmittances of ITO films but can also exceed them in a relative manner. This makes these materials very perfect for touch screens. However, the group now explained for the first time that this kind of nanomaterial can be synced with more demanding application purposes such as OLED and LCD displays.
Professor Dalton further adds, “Display technologies such as LCD and OLED form images using pixels. Each pixel of these displays is further broken down into subpixels; typically, one each for red, green and blue colours. In the display in a smartphone, for example, these subpixels are less than a sixth of the width of a human hair – which is also similar in length to the silver nanowires used in our research.”
Another member and one of the lead authors of this paper, Dr.Matthew Large, explains, “In this research we have applied a mathematical technique to work out the smallest subpixel size we can make without affecting the properties of our nanowire electrodes. This method was originally developed to describe how phase changes like freezing happen in very small spaces, The results tell us how to tune our nanowires to meet the requirements of any given application.”
The team is now collaborating with its industrial partners to see the application of this technology on commercial level.
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