Apple Inc.

Sumitomo Chemical Company, Limited

Other

Masato Kuwabara

John Z Zhong

Cheng Kai Chen

Enkhamgalan Dorjgotov

Toshihiro Ohnishi

Sunggu Kang

Takanobu Noguchi

Paul Stephen Drzaic

Wei Chen

Hoon Sik Kim

Christopher D Jones

Nikhil D Kalyankar

Chun-Hao Tung

Chang-Chia Huang

Yasmin F Afsar

Makoto Namioka

Terry C Shyu

Steven Porter Hotelling

Victor H Yin

Jun Qi

Martin Paul Grunthaner

Lynn Richard Youngs

Nathan K Gupta

Wonjae Choi

Albert Lin

Koji Higashi

Akiko Shimizu

Christopher L Boitnott

Benjamin M Rappoport

Koichi Fujisawa

Lili Huang

Norman Haberle

Eckhard Hanelt

Kayoko Ueda

Siddharth Mohapatra

Michitaka Morikawa

Yasuteru Maeda

Thomas Kammel

Roland Lue

Tsutomu Furuya

Protective cover layers for electronic devices are described. In an embodiment, an electronic device includes a display panel and a protective cover layer over the display panel. The protective cover layer includes a transparent support substrate and a hardcoat layer covering an exterior facing surface of the transparent support substrate. The display panel may be a flexible display panel and the protective cover layer may flex with the flexible display panel.

Hybrid coverlay/window structure for flexible display applications

Touch sensor panels typically include a plurality of layers that can be stacked on top of each other. When the touch sensor panel is used in a bright environment, incident light can hit the interfaces between those layers of the stackup having mismatched refractive indices and can reflect off those interfaces. The light reflected from those interfaces can give rise to the appearance of fringes on the touch sensor panel, which can be visually distracting. In order to reduce the appearance of these fringes, embodiments of the disclosure are directed to the addition of an index matching passivation layer between a conductive layer of traces and an adhesive layer in the touch sensor panel stackup.

Touch sensor panel having an index matching passivation layer

Electronic devices may be provided with displays that have polarizers. A polarizer may have a polymer layer that has a portion covered with a dichroic dye to form a polarized region and a portion that is free of dichroic dye to form an unpolarized region. The unpolarized region may be formed by masking the polymer layer during a dye coating process. Masks may be formed from polymers. The shape of the mask may define the shape of the unpolarized region. The mask may be left in place within the polarizer or may be removed from the polarizer during fabrication. Unpolarized regions may also be formed by light bleaching, chemical bleaching, and material removal techniques. Bleached areas may be chemically stabilized. A moisture barrier layer may be incorporated into the polarizer to help prevent the unpolarized region from reverting to a polarized state.

Electronic device display with polarizer windows

A polarizer integrated with conductive material and a process for forming a polarizer integrated with conductive material are disclosed. A polarizer can be integrated with conductive material to form a portion of a touch sensor panel. In one example, a layer of conductive film forming either the row or column traces can be patterned on a surface of a substrate in the polarizer. In another example, the layer of conductive film can be patterned on a viewing angle compensation film of the polarizer. One or more of the polarizer's polarizing layer, protective substrates or viewing angle compensation film can act as a dielectric between the conductive material forming the rows and column traces in the stack-up. As a result, the clear polymer spacer acting as a dielectric in touch panels can be removed, reducing the thickness of the touch screen stack-up.

Integrated polarizer and conductive material

A polarizer includes a polarizer component having a top surface and an opposite bottom surface. The bottom surface is configured to couple to a color filter layer for a liquid crystal display. The polarizer also includes a transparent conducting layer disposed over the top surface. The transparent conducting layer being configured to electrically shield the LCD from a touch panel. The polarizer further includes a coating layer disposed over the transparent conducting layer.

Touch screen display with transparent electrical shielding layer

When a user operates a touch sensor panel having an LCD device outdoors or in a bright environment, light reflecting off the device can create glare. In order to reduce glare, a user can view the device through polarized filters such as polarized sunglasses. Doing so can reduce the visibility of the image displayed on the LCD. A quarter-wave retardation film can be added to the touch sensor panel's LCD device to mitigate these effects by producing circularly polarized light. However, adding a separate quarter-wave retardation film can increase the thickness and cost of manufacturing the touch sensor panel. Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to a touch sensor panel constructed from a base film having quarter-wave retardation properties that can produce circularly polarized light. Because the base film has the desired optical properties, a separate quarter-wave retardation film may not be needed.

Dual purpose touch sensor panel and optical retarder

An electronic device may be provided with a display such as a liquid crystal display. The liquid crystal display may have a color filter layer, a thin-film-transistor layer, and a layer of liquid crystal material between the color filter layer and the thin-film-transistor layer. A lower polarizer may be formed under the thin-film-transistor layer. An upper polarizer may be formed on the color filter layer. A shielding antireflection layer may be formed on the upper polarizer. The shielding antireflection layer may serve both as a shielding layer that protects against display damage due to electrostatic charge and as an antireflection coating that helps to minimize reflections from the surface of the display. The shielding antireflection layer may include low and high index of refraction layers and a conductive layer such as a transparent conductive oxide layer that provides shielding.

Display with shielding antireflection layer

Electronic devices may be provided with displays having polarizer structures. Polarizer structures may incorporate flexible layers of glass. The flexible glass layers may be laminated to other sheets of material in the polarizer structures using roll-to-roll lamination equipment. After the polarizer structures are cut into panels, the panels may be laminated to liquid crystal display structures, organic light-emitting-diode display structures or other display structures using sheet-to-sheet lamination tools. Ultraviolet-light-blocking material may be incorporated into a display to prevent damage to the polarizer layers in the polarizer structures. Coatings such as antireflection coatings, antistatic coating, and anti-smudge coatings may be provided on the polarizer structures. Displays may use the flexible glass layers and additional protective layers to prevent a polarizer layer from being exposed to excessive moisture. A birefringent layer may be incorporated into a display and may serve as a protective layer for a polarizer.

Electronic devices with flexible glass polarizers

The present invention provides an antiglare film having the reflectance at an angle of reflection of 30&#xb0; for incident lightat an incident angle of 30&#xb0; of not more than 2%, and the reflectance of not more than 0.003% at an angle of reflection of 40&#xb0; in an antiglare film which also satisfies any of the following (1) to (5): (1) 50 to 150 protrusions are provided within a region of 200 &#x3bc;m&#xd7;200 &#x3bc;m; (2) when the height of each point on the uneven surface is shown in a histogram, the peak exists in a range between +20% and &#x2212;20% with the middle point between the highest point and the lowest point at the center; (3) the arithmetic average height Pa on the surface is 0.08 &#x3bc;m to 0.15 &#x3bc;m; (4) the maximum height in a cross section Pt on the surface is 0.4 &#x3bc;m to 0.9 &#x3bc;m; and (5) the average area of the polygons is 300 &#x3bc;mto 1000 &#x3bc;mwhen Voronoi division is carried out on the surface of the film with the peaks of these protrusions as generating points.

Antiglare film and image display

Growing community of inventors

Tsukuba, Japan

Masato Kuwabara