A touch screen or capacitive touch screen is basically the combination of an output and input device. The touch screen is most commonly layered over an internal digital display of some sort. The screen is most often LCD, AMOLED, or LED screen while the device is most commonly a tablet, laptop, or smartphone. Capacitive touch screen technology also exists for use in touch pad devices such as laptop keyboards, touchscreens used in medical equipment, and touch screens for industrial control panels.

A capacitive touch screen operates based on the principle that your finger interacts with the screen and the corresponding computer mouse to form a virtual touch sensitive surface. This interaction is captured by the device’s circuitry. When the finger makes contact with the surface, an electric current is produced which is detected by the circuitry. This electric current is sent to the nerves in your hand that are directly connected to the brain which interprets the movements of your finger and translates them into a physical touch.

The finger interacts with a display screen and the liquid crystal cells (LCDs) are lit up in various colors depending on whether your finger is entering or leaving the liquid crystal screen. When you give the finger a point, it registers that point and the corresponding action have occurred. This is the basic mechanism of how touch screen works. However, a finger can only provide a certain amount of points per second. Your eye is capable of detecting all these points at the same time, but we don’t know if it can detect all the different actions your finger takes.

So how can we make the monitor more responsive? Our idea is to use the electrical charge from our finger or other sources to change the amount of current flowing through the display screen. In other words, we want to make the interaction between the two devices very similar to the one our eyes use to read. Our goal is to provide our user with extremely sensitive and comfortable interface to interact with the system.

So how do we achieve this? We need to understand two touch technologies that are used in electronic monitors – resistive and infrared. Resistive touch screen uses a combination of transistors and capacitors to change the electrical charge of the finger. Capacitive touch screen uses a couple of coupled plates (one positively charged and one negatively charged) to change the electrical charge of the finger. Both of these technologies operate at the same frequency and can easily be combined with the existing liquid crystal display screen technology.

If we combine the above technologies with some special glass materials called Toric film, we are in great shape to get near perfect results. A touch screen protector film works like a fingerprint shield as touch is detected only when there is contact with the screen itself. When a finger comes in physical contact with the screen, the film produces a light signal that can be seen by the human eye. This is what makes tempered glass screen protectors different from regular glass screen protectors.

When you use a touch screen phone, you don’t want it to shatter into a million pieces! And so, there have been some improvements on resistive touch screen technology. In particular, there was an advancement recently in the thickness of the touch screen. Some resistive touch screen phones actually has a paper-thin piece of glass between the resistive layer and the touchscreen. This reduces the chances of the glass breaking into a thousand little pieces that literally threaten the functionality of the phone.

There are also advanced infrared touch screen technologies being used in cell phones. Again, resistive and infrared screens work together in some cases. The main difference is that the infrared technology allows more precise manipulation of the objects like menus and home pages. If you really want to get into the technology, you can check out my site for more information. There, I’ve posted links to a few sources for you.