What Is a TFT Touch Screen?

TFT (Thin Film Transistor) Touchscreen devices can be found in several new touchscreen devices including tablet computers, car global positioning systems and even new automated teller machines.

What is a TFT

• Yeh-Jiun Tung of UC Berkeley states that a TFT is a transistor whose active, current-carrying layer is a thin film, in contrast to metal--oxide--semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), which are made on Silicon wafers and use bulk Silicon as the active layer. This means the active layer (the layer that actually moves the electricity from the top touchscreen to the device motherboard) of the TFT is lighter and allows for a thinner screen, without compromising performance.

Advantage of the TFT

• Each pixel on a TFT display is backed by a tiny transistor which is far more efficient than old style CRT(Cathode Ray Tube) monitors. TFT LCD displays can show crisp text, vivid colors, fast animations, and complex graphics. This multiple transistor technology also allows for very fast re-drawing of the display so the image does not flicker or band.

TFT Uses

• TFT touchscreens are used in various LCD display units. The TFT screens offer an easier user interface and can be used instead of traditional touchscreens for switches, connectors, cable covers and heaters, according to eetimes.com. This allows a simple swipe on a touchscreen monitor to control a machine function so that all user interfaces are the same.