Brainport display expertise and Japanese chemistry combine in innovative touchless interface

TNO at Holst Centre and Japanese chemical company Asahi Kasei have come up with an entirely new concept for touchless user interface displays. Using a printed copper-grid bottom electrode from Asahi Kasei, Holst Centre developed a near-infrared-sensitive transparent image sensor that can be integrated into various commercially available displays to equip them with a penlight or gesture-controlled UI. The new concept has recently been published in Nature Electronics.

The currently available touchless user interfaces typically rely on near-infrared cameras. However, such systems are often hampered by a limited field of view and high-accuracy calibration requirements. The touchless UI now demonstrated is based on a visually transparent NIR-sensitive organic photodetector array and can be used on top of a display. Optical transparency is achieved using a printed copper grid as a bottom transparent conductive electrode and an array of patterned organic photodetector subpixels.

“Combining the technology of Asahi Kasei with our expertise and know-how of design has significantly advanced the application domain of touchless interfaces. The excellent transparency and ease of scalability enables its use with a variety of different displays including ATMs, electric signage and interactive whiteboards – without size limitations and calibration requirements,” says Albert van Breemen, program manager at Holst Centre.