Home / News / 2010 / JSR to make full-scale entry into optical ITO film market (for touch panels) with in-house technologies

News

JSR to make full-scale entry into optical ITO film market (for touch panels) with in-house technologies

PRODUCTS  10/13/2010
TOKYO - 13 October 2010 - JSR Corporation (President: Mitsunobu Koshiba) has developed an ITO film that offers far greater suitability for secondary processing, more so than the company's ARTON resin, which has excellent transparent heat-resistant properties and phase-contrast appearance. The ITO film is aimed toward the touch panel market such as smartphones and tablet PCs, which are currently showing rapid expansion. In addition, JSR has established a full-scale supply system by installing ITO manufacturing equipment with the company's in-house technologies. This functional film has the optical characteristics and heat-resistant properties of ARTON, with the additional features of JSR's UV cross-linked hard coating material and optical nanoparticles; and is a film with a highly-efficient, transparent electrode. Additionally, these products are under marketing in the Asian market (including Japan), and several companies have already started to adopt such products.

JSR does not only offer "innovative materials", but in order to provide further value to the customers of our products, since 2008, JSR has forged precision processing technologies at the company. This time, JSR has developed a superior ARTON film, suitable for secondary processing with features such as compatibility for high heat during the silver paste process, little warping and breaking during the production processing of touch screens. The transparent electrode ITO film developed with the superior ARTON film is a result of combining ARTON's characteristics of optical performance and heat resistance to JSR's original layering techniques such as membrane production/stretching technologies, forming technologies of the film's surface, coating and transparent electrode technologies.

The following is a list of the main transparent electrode film products to be launched:
(1)Etching markless film for electrostatic capacitive type of touch panels:
Touch panels with electrostatic capacitance which are used in the increasingly popular smartphones, contain an electrode patterns across the entire screen, which enables multi-touching to be possible. The electrode pattern formed by etching provides an invisible conductive film.

(2)Fully clear Newton ringless film for resistive type of touch panels:
Resistive touch panels which are used in the pens of gadgets such as portable game devices and smartphones, usually generate Newton rings (a phenomenon which appears as a rainbow pattern due to the interference of light) when the pen touches the surface of the screen. JSR will now offer a "fully clear Newton ringless film" that prevents the appearance of Newton rings, which could not be achieved with the clear films of the past.

(3)Anti-reflection films for outdoor use:
Touch panels are increasingly being used in personal navigation devices (PND), mainly for outdoor use, such as detachable car navigation systems. Particularly for such applications, external light reflects the internal part of the touch panel, leading to difficulties in clearly seeing the screen. To resolve this issue, JSR offers a film which enables outdoor-use by combining the film with polarizing plates etc.

JSR has defined precision materials and processing, medical care, and the environment and energy domains as the "strategic businesses", in which forthcoming, large growth is expected. For these businesses, great importance will be placed on the allocation of resources, and the launch of businesses will be accelerated in order to make the strategic businesses the third source of earnings, following the petrochemicals business, and the information/electronic materials business. With the progress made so far, our corporate philosophy of "Materials Innovation" will be the basis of JSR's business activities, and through innovative and competitive materials development, JSR will constantly develop new materials ("innovative materials") and strive to release these into the market.