KR20070026713A - Touch panel - Google Patents

Abstract

A touch panel is provided to prevent bend from being generated in the touch panel using a glass as an upper substrate, and prevent price rise and substandard increase of an upper glass by using the film as the upper substrate. Two substrates faced with each other are used, and a transparent conductive thin film(3) and an electrode(4) are formed on each substrate. An upper substrate(2) and a lower substrate(1) are coupled by using adhesive agent(5). Thickness of a product is reduced by using wet-etching, sandblasting, or polishing.

Description

Touch Panel {Touch Panel}

1 is a conventional film-glass touch panel manufacturing process

2 is a conventional glass-glass touch panel manufacturing process

3 is a touch panel manufacturing process according to the present invention

4a or upper panel structure of the touch panel

4b lower touch panel lower substrate structure

4c or touch panel cross-sectional structure

(Explanation of symbols for the main parts of the drawing)

(1): lower substrate

(2): upper board

(3): transparent conductive thin film

(4): electrode

(5): adhesive

(6): spacer

(7): air gap

The touch panel is used in CAD, production system, game machine, kiosk, POS system, or medical field. It is an input device like keyboard or mouse, which is mounted on the display surface, which is an output device, to be output by the user. It is a device that allows you to input various ways by talking with your hand or pen while looking directly at the display surface.

The touch panel includes a resistive film type, a capacitive type, an infrared light type, a surface ultrasonic type, and a force sensing type according to an operation method.

In the resistive film method, the transparent conductive films facing each other are brought into contact with each other by a user's touch, and the position is recognized by reading the change of the current flowing through the upper and lower transparent conductive films. It is divided into resistive film type and 5-wire resistive film type.

In the case of the resistive touch panel, two substrates facing each other are used, and as the substrate, film, glass, plastic, and the like are used. According to the type of the substrate is divided into film-film method, film-glass method, glass-glass method, film-plastic method and the like.

1 shows a film-glass manufacturing process which is most used among existing touch panel methods.

As shown in the drawing, it is divided into an upper plate process and a lower plate process. As a material used for the upper plate process, a film coated with a transparent conductive film is used. As a material used in the lower plate process, a glass coated with a transparent conductive film is used. In the case of the upper plate process, the film is cut, the electrode is printed and dried, and the film is cut after the adhesive attaching process for bonding the upper plate and the lower plate. In the lower plate process, the glass is cleaned / dried, the transparent conductive film (ITO) is etched, and the electrode and the spacer are printed / dried. After that, the glass is scribed and broken, and the FPC is attached to apply a signal to the touch panel.

After going through the bonding process of attaching the upper and lower plates prepared in this way, the appearance and characteristic inspection are completed.

2 shows a glass-glass manufacturing process of the existing touch panel method.

As shown in the figure, because the material used for the top plate process is glass instead of film, it is subjected to scribing and breaking after bonding.

In the case of film-film method, film-glass method, and film-plastic method, the film is used as the upper substrate, and the drying process is performed as shown in FIG. 1, and the upper and lower substrates have an air gap 7 as shown in FIG. 4C. Since the film is floating in between, there is a disadvantage that the appearance of the touch panel is not good due to the bending of the film due to the ductility of the film.

In contrast, in the case of the glass-glass method, since the upper substrate is made of glass, a flat touch panel can be made without bending the appearance. However, in the case of the glass used as the glass-glass upper substrate, a thin glass of about 0.05 mm to 0.2 mm is used. In this case, the price of the glass rises and breakage during operation is generally difficult to use.

Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a touch panel that can supplement the disadvantages of the various types of touch panel of the prior art.

The touch panel manufacturing process of the present invention prevents bending of the upper panel from the appearance of the touch panel using the film, and can eliminate the price increase, defect rate increase of the upper glass, which is a disadvantage of the touch panel using the upper substrate from glass. The purpose is to provide a touch panel manufacturing process.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail.

3 is a view showing a manufacturing process of the touch panel according to the present invention, which is divided into a top plate process, a bottom plate process, after the bonding process, wet etching or sand blasting method in the conventional glass-glass touch panel manufacturing process or The polishing method includes a process of reducing the thickness of one of the upper and lower substrates of the touch panel or the upper and lower substrates.

Looking at the process of the touch panel of the present invention in detail as follows.

First, the upper substrate 1 and the lower substrate 2 generally use a glass coated with a transparent conductive thin film 3, and the transparent conductive thin film 3 is made of a transparent and conductive metal oxide. As the metal oxide forming the transparent conductive thin film 3, ITO, indium oxide, tin oxide with antimony additive, tin oxide with fluorine additive, zinc oxide with aluminum additive, zinc oxide with gallium additive, zinc with silicon additive One of an oxide, a zinc oxide-tin oxide group metal oxide and a zinc oxide-indium oxide-magnesium oxide group metal oxide can be used. As a method of forming such a transparent conductive thin film 3, there are a vacuum deposition method, a sputtering method, an ion plating method, or a CVD method.

The glass coated with the prepared transparent conductive thin film is subjected to a cleaning / drying process.

In the case of forming the electrode 4, it is formed by a thick film printing method using carbon and silver ink or carbon or silver mixed ink. Alternatively, the method may be a single layer or multi-layered material selected from the group consisting of aluminum, copper, nickel, chromium, silver, and gold, or an alloy composed of at least two or more materials including the material of the group. It may be formed to consist of a single layer structure or a multi-layer structure of the material. Such materials may be formed by vacuum deposition, sputtering, ion plating, or CVD. In the case of the adhesive 5, a rubber, acrylic, or silicone adhesive may be used, or a double-coated tape coated with the adhesive 6 may be used, and a sealant for high temperature firing may be used. It is formed by the process such as screen printing and double-sided tape.

In the case of ITO etching, the metal conductive film of the unnecessary portion is removed through wet-etching or laser-etching.

The upper substrate and the lower substrate thus prepared are subjected to a process of bonding using an adhesive.

Next, the thickness of the touch panel is reduced by wet etching, sandblasting, or polishing.

Next, several touch panels are made through a scribing and breaking process to make individual touch panels. After bonding the FPC for signal application, the inspection process is completed.

Thus, the present invention has the following advantages over the conventional touch panel.

First, since the upper substrate uses glass, the disadvantage of the film-glass method can eliminate the disadvantage of poor appearance due to the bending of the upper film.

Second, it is possible to eliminate the disadvantages of an increase in the glass unit cost, which is a disadvantage caused by the thin thickness of the glass used as the upper substrate, which is a disadvantage of the conventional glass-glass method, and the failure of the failure during the process.

Claims (1)

In the touch panel manufacturing process, the touch panel is manufactured to have a thickness of 0.1 mm to 1.5 mm by wet etching, sandblasting, or polishing. Manufacturing method and touch panel using the same

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