Peratech QTC Clear Technology Offers Better Touchscreens

British compan Peratech announced Quantum Tunneling Composite (QTC) clear technology that not only senses the location at which the screen is touched, but also senses the pressure. The QTC technology has potential to change the way future smart phone & tablet touchscreen offer interaction with applications. Peratech claims that the technology will make touchscreens thinner, more stronger, rugged and consume lesser energy. The company's been working on bridging the gap between two popular types of touchscreens: capacitive and resistive. Currently capacitive touchscreens are immensely popular in smart phones and tablets. The biggest advantage of capacitive touchscreens is that they are quick in response and sense multiple touch at the same time, however they draw lot of power through a grid of electrodes. The energy consumption grows with the size of the capacitive touchscreen.

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Credit: Peratech

On the other hand, resistive touchscreens consume lesser power and typically used for ATM machine screens. The resistive touchscreens were also popular in the early designs of touch enabled smartphones. However the biggest hurdle is that they are not highly responsive. Also the durability is lesser as compared to the capacitive touchscreens. The resistive touchscreens are manufactured by sandwiching very thin layer of air between two very soft & transparent material. When pressed, the gap between the two screens is bridged and thus a touch is registered. This technique isn't very effective and cannot register multiple touches simultaneously.

Peratech has taken the best of both technologies and also avoids the negatives. Instead of air, QTC Clear technology uses a composite material capable of conducting electricity via particles sandwiched between rigid glass. When the screen is touched with finger or a stylus, the the conducting material allows electricity to pass through it directly proportional to the pressure. This technique uses very small gap between the rigid glass material.

Peratech expects the product to be available by the end of the year.

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