KR20130037014A - Touch screen and method for manufacturing the same - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: A touch screen and a touch screen manufacturing method thereof are provided to supply performance-improved tempered glass during tempered processing with a disk and to perform the tempered processing to a part of a side besides top and bottom parts of the tempered glass. CONSTITUTION: A line groove(101) is formed on a surface of disk glass(100a) and the whole of the surface is tempered-processed. Touch panels(20) are attached to the tempered-processed surface of the disk glass. A unit cell touch screen is produced by cutting a protective film(30) and the tempered-processed disk glass along the line groove. The touch panels are attached to the tempered-processed disk glass by attaching the protective film to a top surface, adhering the tempered-processed surface of the disk glass to a top surface of the protective film, and removing the protective film. [Reference numerals] (AA) Preparing disk glass; (BB) Forming line grooves; (CC) Tempering treatment; (DD) Preparing a protective film; (EE) Attaching tempered-processed disk glass and the protective film; (FF) Removing the protective film; (GG) Cutting; (HH) Touch screen;

Description

Touch screen and method for manufacturing the same}

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a touch screen and a touch screen manufacturing method, and a touch screen used in a terminal display device and the like and a method of manufacturing such a touch screen.

The touch screen refers to a screen equipped with a special input device that receives a location when a touch such as a hand is touched. In other words, when a person's hand or an object touches a character or a specific location on the screen (screen) without using a keyboard, the input data can be directly received from the screen so that the location can be determined and processed by the stored software. Speak the screen that made it possible. As shown in FIG. 1, the touch screen exerts a function by adding a touch panel 20 to a panel glass 21 such as a monitor screen, and the touch panel 20 is invisible from side to side. By letting infrared rays flow through the screen, numerous rectangular grids can be created, so that they can be located by touching the grid with a fingertip or other object.

Since the touch screen 1 is widely used as a mobile communication terminal, the panel glass 21 used for the touch screen should be strengthened so as not to be easily broken.

The panel glass may be tempered so that the upper and lower sides thereof are not broken. For example, FIG. 2 is a perspective view of a glass unit cell glass, such as panel glass, which has the advantage that all six surfaces including the upper and lower surfaces and the side surface are strengthened, but all surfaces of the cell unit glass 10a are strengthened. Since the processing to produce the cell-based tempered glass 10 has a problem that the process time is increased, thereby increasing the cost.

As shown in FIG. 3 in order to solve the above-mentioned process time and cost increase problem, the entire surface of the glass (100a) of the disc unit rather than the cell unit is strengthened after cutting the cell unit tempered glass ( 100) has been presented. That is, as shown in Fig. 3 (a), the original glass 100a is provided, and as shown in Fig. 3 (b), the upper and lower surfaces of the original glass 100a are strengthened through thermal or chemical strengthening. . Thereafter, as shown in FIG. 3 (c), when the reinforced glass plate 100 is cut by using a cutting means such as a laser, the cut cell unit tempered glass 10 as shown in FIG. It can be acquired. However, in the case of the cell unit tempered glass 10 that has undergone the process of FIG. 3, only the upper and lower surfaces of the glass may be tempered, but the side may not be tempered. Therefore, there is a problem that the side is vulnerable to shock or external stimulus and easily broken by the side impact.

(Previous Document 1) Korean Patent Publication 10-2011-0092777

The technical problem of the present invention is to produce a touch screen with improved reinforcement performance. In addition, the technical problem of the present invention is to produce a touch screen advantageous for mass production. In addition, the technical problem of the present invention is to provide a touch screen manufacturing method that can reduce the production cost.

The touch screen fabrication process according to the embodiment of the present invention includes the steps of forming a line groove on the surface of the original glass and reinforcing the entire surface, attaching a plurality of touch panels to the surface of the reinforced glass, and Cutting the protective film and the tempered original glass along the line grooves to produce a unit cell touch screen.

In addition, the touch screen fabrication process is to form a line groove on the surface of the original glass and to strengthen the entire surface, and then to prepare a tempered glass produced by cutting the reinforced original glass along the line groove, and the touch panel Attaching to the surface of the tempered glass.

The step of providing the tempered glass, the process of providing the original glass, the process of forming a line groove on the surface of the original glass, the process of strengthening the surface of the original glass, the strengthened original glass the line Cutting along the groove to produce unit cell tempered glass.

Moreover, the touch screen which is embodiment of this invention is provided with the upper surface, the lower surface, and the side surface which connects the upper surface and the lower surface, and the reinforced area formed in a part of side surface and at least one of the said upper surface and the lower surface. It includes a tempered glass having a, and a touch panel attached to the tempered glass.

The side surface has a vertical surface in the vertical direction, and the corner surface connecting the side from the upper surface, the reinforcement region is formed on the corner surface. The edge surface is formed of an inclined surface, a curved surface, a step surface.

According to the embodiment of the present invention, it is possible to produce a touch screen having tempered glass with improved performance during reinforcement using the original. Moreover, according to embodiment of this invention, not only the upper and lower surfaces of the tempered glass used for a touch screen but also a part of side surface can be made to be tempered. In addition, it is advantageous for mass production, thereby reducing manufacturing costs.

1 is a cross-sectional view of a touch screen.
2 is a perspective view illustrating a process of reinforcing glass in a cell unit.
3 is a perspective view illustrating a process of fabricating a cell unit tempered glass by cutting the original glass after the strengthening treatment.
4 is a perspective view illustrating a process of manufacturing a tempered glass according to an embodiment of the present invention.
5 is a perspective view illustrating a state in which line grooves are formed on both sides of an upper surface and a lower surface of the original glass according to an embodiment of the present invention.
6 is a perspective view of a unit cell tempered glass produced when cut along a line groove formed on both sides of the upper and lower surfaces of the original glass according to an embodiment of the present invention.
7 is a cross-sectional view of the unit cell tempered glass finally produced by the above process.
8 is a perspective view of a unit cell tempered glass cut using a line groove and a touch panel attached to each other according to an exemplary embodiment of the present invention.
9 is a perspective view illustrating a process of producing a touch screen by cutting and then attaching a plurality of touch panels and a tempered glass prepared by cutting along a line groove according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described an embodiment of the present invention in more detail. However, the present invention is not limited to the embodiments disclosed below, but will be implemented in various forms, and only the embodiments are intended to complete the disclosure of the present invention and to those skilled in the art to fully understand the scope of the invention. It is provided to inform you. Wherein like reference numerals refer to like elements throughout.

4 is a perspective view illustrating a process of manufacturing a tempered glass according to an embodiment of the present invention.

First, as shown to Fig.4 (a), the original glass 100a is provided. As the material of the disc glass 100a, various glass raw materials such as soda lime silicate may be used. In addition, the size of the original glass (100a) has a large size, in order to produce a plurality of unit cell glass by cutting the reinforced original glass. The unit cell glass may be used to manufacture terminal display devices, display devices of other electronic devices, cathode ray tubes, electric discharge devices, fluorescent lamps, and the like.

On the other hand, the disc glass 100a contains sodium, magnesium, aluminum, silicon, sulfur, potassium, calcium, titanium, iron, chlorine, etc., in the case of manufacturing chemically strengthened glass, sodium (Na) component is chemically strengthened The sodium content of the disc glass is important because it is an essential component for ion substitution for. If the sodium content is too low, it is difficult to achieve the desired chemical strengthening due to insufficient ion substitution, and if the sodium content is too high, whitening of the glass occurs when the glass is used for a long time.

Thus, the sodium content suitable for chemical strengthening is on the order of about 12% to 18% by weight. If the sodium content is less than 12%, the insufficient amount of sodium ions that can be substituted makes it hard to sufficiently strengthen, and if the sodium content exceeds 18% by weight, breakage of the glass may occur during the strengthening treatment, which is not appropriate. If the sodium content is less than 12% by weight, additional treatment must be performed.

In addition, the disc glass 100a may be chemically strengthened according to the present invention when the thickness is 300 μm or more. However, when performing the heat strengthening, the original glass thickness is preferably 3mm. Disc glass larger than 3 mm can also be thermally or chemically strengthened. Therefore, since reinforcement occurs through the treatment of the surface of the glass, the upper limit of the thickness of the original glass is not meaningful, and the thickness of the original glass does not have great meaning as long as it has a thickness that is greater than that of heat or chemical strengthening.

After the original glass is provided, a line groove 101 is formed on the surface of the original glass 100a, as shown in Fig. 4B. The line grooves 101 form grooves on the surface as lines to be cut when the disc glass 100a is cut in order to produce unit cell tempered glass later. The line groove 101 is formed of a plurality of lines that cross each other horizontally and vertically, depending on the size of the unit cell tempered glass.

The line groove 101 may be grooved in a sharp shape, such as a V-shape, grooved in a curved shape, such as a U-shape, or grooved in various shapes, such as a square shape. In the case of V-shape, there is an advantage that can be easily cut at the time of cutting, in the case of U-shape or square shape has the advantage of having a straight side after cutting.

In addition, the depth in which the line grooves 101 are excavated allows the grooves to be formed to less than half the thickness of the original glass. This is because when the original glass exceeds 1/2 of the thickness of the original glass, the original glass may be unintentionally broken at the time of strengthening or transferring the original glass. Preferably, the line grooves are dug to the depth of 1/3 of the original glass thickness. Therefore, in the case of having a disc glass thickness of 300 mu m, it is preferable that the line groove is dug to a depth of 100 mu m on the surface.

In addition, the line groove 101 may be formed on only one surface of the upper surface or the lower surface of the disk glass 100a. As another embodiment, the line grooves as shown in FIG. 5 are formed on the upper and lower surfaces of the disk glass. Both sides may be formed. By forming line grooves on both the upper surface and the lower surface of the disc glass, the reinforced surface of the side of the unit cell tempered glass which is later cut can be increased.

On the other hand, after the line groove 101 is formed, as shown in FIG. 4 (c), the surface of the original glass is reinforced to have a process of manufacturing the strengthened original glass 100. Since the reinforcement treatment is performed on the surface of the original glass, it can be seen that the reinforcement treatment is performed even deep into the line groove 101. Therefore, when the disc glass is later cut along the line groove, the cut side can be strengthened.

The reinforcement treatment method can be largely made in two ways, one being heat strengthening and the other being chemical strengthening. Hereinafter, as the reinforcement treatment method according to an embodiment of the present invention, an example of the thermal reinforcement method and the chemical reinforcement method will be briefly described, but there may be various reinforcement treatment embodiments.

The heat strengthening method is a method of heating the surface of glass and quenching the surface using a coolant to strengthen the glass strength. For example, a mixture containing 30 mol% cesium nitrate (CsNO3) and 70 mol% alumina (Al2O3) is coated on the surface of a glass disc with a line groove. At this time, the alumina is used powder having an average size of the particles of about 0.1㎛.

A drying process of evaporating moisture from the surface of the glass disc is performed to form a solid salt-containing layer on the glass surface. After the drying process, the glass disc is introduced into an electric furnace and heat treated according to a set temperature-time schedule. The temperature-time schedule first heated from 20 ° C. to 450 ° C. for 60 minutes. Next, 450 ° C. is maintained for 120 minutes and then cooled from 450 ° C. to 20 ° C. for 60 minutes. After the heat treatment is performed, a glass diffusion plate may be washed to form a surface diffusion layer on the glass surface to be strengthened.

The chemical strengthening method is a method using the principle of forming a compressive stress layer on the surface of a glass panel through ion exchange treatment. Chemical strengthening methods include alkali metal removal on the surface and alkali metal exchange. The alkali metal exchange system includes a high temperature type ion exchange method and a low temperature type ion exchange method.

In the case of the high temperature ion exchange method, the glass is heat-treated at a temperature higher than the transition temperature of the glass, and Na ⁺ ions in the glass are replaced with K ⁺ ions using a solution of KNO ₃ or a composition containing the same, and then the surface of the glass is reheated. It is a method of strengthening the glass by generating a stress by inducing a crystallized layer having a low coefficient of thermal expansion. Unlike the low temperature ion exchange method, when the glass is immersed in an alkali salt melt maintained at about 500 ° C. below the slow cooling temperature of the glass, exchange of alkali ions in the glass and alkali ions in the melt causes compressive stress on the glass surface. It is a method of forming.

After the original glass with the line grooves formed as described above is tempered by heat or chemical strengthening, the original glass is cut along the line grooves 101 to be used in the display terminal as shown in FIG. 4 (d). Tempered glass 10 (unit cell tempered glass) can be finally produced. The cutting process of the tempered disc glass 100 is of great importance for chemical strengthening, and a cutting method that does not give stress by heat is preferable.

When the strength of the tempered treatment on the original glass is weakened, cutting by water jet may be possible. Water jet is a method of cutting glass by spraying water mixed with high pressure water and an abrasive and is suitable because it generates little heat. However, the surface of the glass may be scratched due to the scattering of the abrasive, and fine fracture may occur on the cut surface due to the impact of the abrasive, so that the fracture site may remain even after polishing. In order to completely remove the ruptured portion of the cut surface can be widened the polishing width. In addition, the above problem can be solved to some extent by using a small abrasive.

However, in the case of water jet, it may not be possible to cut the original glass, the strength of the strengthening treatment is stronger, it may be inappropriate. Therefore, in the case of the disc glass in which the intensity | strength of the strengthening process became strong, cutting using a laser can be performed. In the case of laser cutting, the cutting surface is very clean and there is an excellent advantage that there are few fracture sites. However, high temperature (about 1,100 ℃) occurs during laser cutting, and since the temperature is higher than the chemical strengthening temperature and close to the melting temperature of the glass, the cut surface is cured to the level of thermal strengthening, and the chemically strengthened disc during laser cutting There is a risk of glass breaking. If the external force is applied to the tempered glass surface due to the surface hardness and internal residual stress after the strengthening, there is a fear that breakage easily occurs. To prevent this, a pretreatment process for the line grooves can be added before laser cutting. Therefore, when laser cutting is performed, a pretreatment process for removing or minimizing the thermal effect of the cutting surface due to high temperature may be added.

On the other hand, in the case of laser cutting, there may be a risk of breaking the chemically strengthened original glass due to high temperature cutting, it is possible to perform the cutting using the mask etching. That is, in the case of the chemically strengthened original glass, a mask is applied to the surface of the original glass except for the line groove, and the cured chemical component on the surface of the line groove is etched and removed. Thereafter, the disc glass is cut along the etched line grooves. The cutting of the etched line groove can be performed through a water jet, a laser, or the like because the hardened component is lost.

On the other hand, after cutting the original glass, it is necessary to remove the micro cracks and heat affected areas generated on the cut surface, and the removal of such micro cracks and heat affected areas has a significant effect on reducing the uniformity and defect rate of the quality of the manufactured tempered glass. Go crazy. It is also possible to use a cutting method other than the cutting method described above, but in any case polishing of the cutting surface must be carried out essentially to remove fine cracks and heat affected areas.

On the other hand, it can be seen that not only the upper surface and the lower surface of the unit cell tempered glass 10 of FIG. This is because the reinforcement treatment is performed on the surface of the original glass, and thus the reinforcement treatment is performed deep into the line groove, and eventually, the reinforcement treatment is performed even to the side where the cut groove is cut along the line groove.

On the other hand, when the line groove 101 is formed in both the upper surface and the lower surface of the original glass (100a) as shown in Figure 5, the upper and lower sides of the side of the final unit cell tempered glass as shown in FIG. Can be.

7 is a cross-sectional view of the unit cell tempered glass finally produced by the above process.

The unit cell tempered glass has a glass body having an upper surface, a lower surface, and side surfaces connecting the upper surface and the lower surface. It also has a portion of the side and a reinforcement region formed on at least one of the upper and lower surfaces. The side surface includes a vertical surface A in the vertical direction, and an edge surface B connecting the side surfaces from the upper surface, and a reinforcement region is formed on the edge surface B. Corner surface (B) may be formed differently depending on the fine shape of the line groove, V-shaped line grooves have a slope when piled, U-shaped line grooves, curved surface, square line grooves In the case of the pile is formed into a stepped surface. In addition, the height (H1) of the edge surface (B) is formed to less than 1/2 of the overall height (H) side.

On the other hand, as described above, after forming the line grooves on the surface of the original glass and the entire surface is reinforced, the unit cell tempered glass produced by cutting the original glass is reinforced along the line groove (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6) is used as the panel glass attached to the touch panel of the touch screen. That is, as shown in FIG. 8, the touch panel 20 may be attached to the surface of the tempered glass 10 cut using the line grooves, thereby manufacturing the final touch screen 1.

For reference, the touch panel 20 may be manufactured by various methods such as a resistive film type, a capacitive type, an infrared type, an ultrasonic type, and a cover glass type. If the cover panel is integrated with the touch panel and the panel glass, an electrode is formed on the surface of the unit cell tempered glass that is cut by using the line grooves and then attached to the touch panel.

Meanwhile, as shown in FIG. 9, the unit cell tempered glass cut using the line grooves and the touch panel are attached to each other, and thus the process efficiency decreases because the attaching operation is performed individually. As another embodiment of the present invention by attaching a plurality of touch panels to the reinforcement-treated original plate and cut to produce a single touch screen. This will be described in detail with FIG. 8.

First, as shown to Fig.9 (a), the original glass 100a is provided. A line groove 101 is formed with respect to the original glass as shown in Fig. 9B. Thereafter, the entire surface of the original glass 100a is strengthened as shown in Fig. 9C. The reinforcement treatment may be by thermal reinforcement or chemical reinforcement.

Thereafter, a plurality of touch panels are attached to the surface of the tempered original glass. There may be various methods for attaching the plurality of touch panels to the surface of the tempered original glass, for example, a plurality of touch panels may be attached to the surface of the original glass using a protective film such as a resin. That is, as shown in FIG. 9 (d), the protective film 30 having the plurality of touch panels 20 attached to the upper surface is provided. Thereafter, as shown in FIG. 9 (e), the surface of the tempered original glass 100 and the upper surface of the protective film 300 are adhered to each other, and the protective film is removed as shown in FIG. 8 (f). do.

By cutting along the line grooves, the final individual touch screen 1 can be manufactured as shown in Fig. 9G.

Although the present invention has been described with reference to the accompanying drawings and the preferred embodiments described above, the present invention is not limited thereto but is limited by the following claims. Accordingly, those skilled in the art will appreciate that various modifications and changes may be made thereto without departing from the spirit of the following claims.

1: touch screen 20: touch panel
21: panel glass 30: protective film
10: cell unit tempered glass 100a: disc glass
100: tempered disc glass 101: line groove

Claims (18)

Forming a line groove in the surface of the disc glass and strengthening the entire surface;
Attaching a plurality of touch panels to the surface of the tempered original glass;
Producing a unit cell touch screen by cutting the protective film and the tempered original glass along the line grooves;
Touch screen production method comprising a. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of touch panels are attached to the surface of the tempered glass,
Providing a protective film having a plurality of touch panels attached to an upper surface thereof;
Bonding the surface of the tempered original glass to the top surface of the protective film;
Removing the protective film;
How to make a touch screen to include. Forming a line groove on the surface of the disc glass and strengthening the entire surface, and then preparing the tempered glass prepared by cutting the tempered disc glass along the line groove;
Attaching a touch panel to a surface of the tempered glass;
Touch screen production method comprising a. The process of claim 3, wherein the step of preparing the tempered glass includes:
Preparing a disc glass;
Forming a line groove on the surface of the disc glass;
Reinforcing the surface of the disc glass;
Cutting the strengthened disc glass along the line grooves to produce unit cell tempered glass;
Touch screen production method comprising a. The said line groove is a touchscreen manufacturing method of Claim 1 or 3 formed in at least one of the upper surface and the lower surface of disk glass. The method of claim 1, wherein the line groove is grooved as at least one of a V shape, a U shape, and a square shape. The said line groove is a touchscreen manufacturing method of Claim 1 or 3 in which the groove is formed in less than 1/2 of the thickness of a disc glass. The method of claim 1, wherein the reinforcement treatment is performed by any one of a thermal reinforcement treatment and a chemical reinforcement treatment. The method for manufacturing a touch screen according to claim 1 or 3, wherein the cutting along the line grooves cuts the original glass using a laser. The method of claim 9, wherein a pretreatment step of removing the heat effect of the cut surface due to high temperature is performed before cutting the disc glass using the laser. The method according to claim 1 or 3, wherein the cutting along the line groove,
Applying a mask to a region excluding line grooves of the tempered original glass;
Etching the surface of the line groove;
Cutting the disc glass along the etched line grooves;
Touch screen production method comprising a. 12. The method of claim 11, wherein the cutting of the raw glass along the etched line grooves comprises cutting the raw glass using at least one of a water jet or a laser. A tempered glass having an upper surface, a lower surface, and side surfaces connecting the upper surface and the lower surface, the tempered glass having a portion of the side surface and a strengthening region formed on at least one of the upper and lower surfaces;
A touch panel attached to the tempered glass;
Touch screen comprising a. The touch screen as set forth in claim 13, wherein the side surface has a vertical surface in the vertical direction and an edge surface connecting the side surface to the upper surface, and a reinforcement region is formed at the edge surface. The touch screen as set forth in claim 13, wherein the edge surface is formed of an inclined surface, a curved surface, and a step surface. The touch screen of claim 13, wherein the height of the edge surface is less than half the height of the side surface. The touch screen according to claim 13, wherein the tempered glass is formed by cutting the tempered original glass along the line groove after forming a line groove on the surface of the original glass and reinforcing the entire surface. The touch screen as set forth in claim 17, wherein the touch screen is reinforced to the entire surface of the upper and lower surfaces and the depth of the line grooves on the side surfaces.

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