Tolis Voutsas SID19 Foldable

Abstract:

Flexible display comes of age this year. It seems that the industry has finally settled on the foldable form factor as the way for the dynamically flexible display to debut in products, primarily in the mobile space. This new form factor represents a number of new challenges for the whole display stack including the touch sensor layer. The user interface, which is typically represented by the touch sensor, is now called upon to serve interactions over a dynamically changing surface, and a form factor containing new contact surfaces such as the folding edge. For an unfolded display, one-handed interaction is practically impossible, and the device interface may have to provide increased functionality at the edges of the display as well as the back. Such challenges also represent opportunities for new types of interfaces that transcend the conventional capacitive touch. Force-touch is one of these new interfaces that seems particularly suited to a dynamically flexible display. In this talk, we will discuss the advantages of flexible force touch sensing as it applies to flexible/foldable displays. We will present our technology behind the realization of ultra-thin flexible force sensor arrays that can be integrated behind a foldable OLED, or at the edges of a flexible OLED display. We will also discuss other opportunities for deeper integration of force sensors into the display module.