RAPT develops unique touch solutions for OLED monitors and signage displays

The COVID-19 pandemic created an increased demand for high quality IT solutions, including monitors and collaborative tools, which prompted OLED display makers to start offering solutions for this market for applications like computer monitors, signage and more.

OLED displays that are 20-inch or more suffer from incompatibility with standard capacitive touch, because the thin OLED panel results in large parasitic capacitive coupling with the touch surface. The dynamic driving of OLEDs (where only lit pixels draw current) further reduces the capacitive touch performance by introducing unpredictable display pattern noise. These issues are easily mitigated in small area displays, but as OLEDs increase in size, the performance and costs of capacitive solutions suffer.

Ireland-based RAPT has spent over 10 years developing a novel technology that overcomes these issues with large-area OLEDs. The company's frustrated total internal reflection (“FTIR”) technology is based on low-cost LEDs that create an optical mesh of infrared light signals, read by photodetectors. The LEDs and the photodetectors are placed on the edge of the OLED display. The performance is not affected by capacitive coupling or display pattern noise, and can be used on any screen size.