Patterning and drilling touch panels

Alsdorf, Germany - 4JET Technologies GmbH introduced two new laser systems for processing touch panel displays at C-Touch Shenzen, a Chinese industry event for touch sensitive displays held earlier this week.

TGD laser drilling for cover glass and sapphire
The German high tech system integrator launched the TGD (thin glass drilling) platform for high volume drilling of cover glass for mobile electronics.

The modular TGD platform can handle individual cells or wafers up to entire Gen 5.5 substrates and performs drilling of microphone and speaker slots as well as home buttons or camera glasses. Equipped with diode pumped solid state lasers and proprietary process optics, the TGD allows to create precise non-contact laser drilling of soda lime, sapphire or chemically strengthened glass. Two drilling modules work in parallel for highest throughput. Other than competing laser processes the TGD can drill into coated glass, create hole diameters below 1 mm and shape chamfers.

The machine, engineered by 4JET's specialists in Germany, will also be the first product manufactured by 4JET's Asian supply chain.

LABLATOR selective laser patterning
4JET also introduced its LABLATOR HP platform for selective patterning of transparent conductive films such as ITO or silver nano wires, metals and inks. The new platform allows to pattern both glass and PET substrates at line speeds exceeding 2 m/s.

The platform creates narrow pitched and fine scribes with 20 micron width and 20 micron pitch, thus enabling higher density of silver circuits in the display edge and an almost invisible grid in the touch sensor. 4JET can integrate laser processes for isolation of ITO or silver nano wires on glass, sapphire or PET, as well as ablation of metals from black matrix ink.

Features of the new LABLATOR include an unlimited scanfield option providing for precise processing of devices larger than the conventional working area of laser scanheads, a DXF to G-Code conversion, and the modular design enabling integration of sheet-to-sheet or roll-to-roll automation.