Piezoelectric Display Elements for Integrated Multi-Touch Feedback
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current display technologies face inefficiencies in light transmission, poor performance under bright lighting, and added costs due to the need for separate touch-sensitive or tactile layers that degrade light output, clarity, and contrast, while also limiting touch detection to single points or suffering from poor spatial resolution.
Innovation Solution
An electrically actuable display element utilizing piezoelectric material that integrates visual, touch-sensitive, and tactile functions, where the same material expands or contracts in response to electric fields, allowing for proportional touch detection and tactile feedback without additional layers, using a matrix of cells with piezoelectric actuating elements and a flexible front screen to manage light and pressure.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If separate touch-sensitive and tactile layers are added to the display panel, then touch sensitivity and tactile feedback are enabled, but light output, clarity, and contrast are degraded
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines touch-sensitive and tactile functions into the same material layer that provides visual display. The piezoelectric material serves multiple functions: visual display through light reflection/absorption, touch sensitivity through electrical signal generation on pressure, and tactile feedback through surface deformation. This integration eliminates the need for separate touch and tactile layers, thereby preserving light output, clarity, and contrast while enabling full touch functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
The piezoelectric material layer performs multiple functions simultaneously: it acts as the visual display element, the touch-sensitive sensor, and the tactile output mechanism. This multi-functionality resolves the contradiction by eliminating additional layers that would otherwise block light and degrade display quality.
2Adaptability or versatility
If additional layers are added for touch-sensitive functionality, then user input capability is enabled, but display cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The invention merges touch-sensitive functionality into the existing display structure using the same piezoelectric material layer that provides visual display. This eliminates the need for separate touch-sensitive layers and associated components, thereby reducing manufacturing complexity and cost while maintaining full touch input capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The piezoelectric material serves universal functions including visual display, touch sensing, and tactile feedback, eliminating the need for multiple specialized layers and reducing overall display construction cost.
3Ease of operation
If row and column sensing in a matrix is used for touch detection, then touch sensitivity is achieved, but only single touch detection is possible
Solution Approach 1:
The display is divided into a matrix of independently addressable pixel elements, each with its own piezoelectric material layer. This segmentation allows each pixel to independently detect touch pressure and generate electrical signals, enabling simultaneous detection of multiple touch points across the display surface while maintaining high spatial resolution.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution enhances display efficiency, maintains clarity and contrast, supports multi-touch detection with high spatial resolution, and reduces costs by integrating touch-sensitive and tactile functions within the display panel, improving user interaction and visual experience under various lighting conditions.
Implementation Method 1
Each piezoelectric actuating element is capable of expanding on application of an electric field across the element
Implementation Method 2
piezoelectric materials generate an electric field in response to mechanical stress
Implementation Method 3
The upper surface of each piezoelectric actuating element is arranged to reflect or emit light when illuminated
Data Source
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AI summary
A electrically actuable display element comprises a substrate, a display surface and an electrically actuable element disposed between the substrate and the display surface and electrically actuable so as to bring a portion thereof into proximity or contact with the display surface and thereby change the display state of the display element.