SCHOTT to offer its multifunctional DARO coating for touch displays on CONTURAN glass

Today, anti-reflective coatings offer the best way to increase the contrast of displays in bright environments. Nevertheless, when used on touch screens, when they are touched fingerprints are left behind and this makes for an unattractive appearance. By combining its coating technologies, SCHOTT now offers a permanent anti-reflective coating that strengthens touch screens made of glass. There are currently very few other products available on the market for manufacturers that feature coatings that are capable of resisting the burden of being touched many times and the chemical stresses fingerprints cause without attacking the surface or making it difficult to clean.

“It is important to us to offer a solution that meets or exceeds the increasing demands of product designers, yet enhances user friendliness,” explains Marten Walther, Head of Application Development at the SCHOTT Advanced Optics plant in Grünenplan. SCHOTT has introduced this coating on the basis of its anti-reflective glass CONTURAN^® that many customers all over the world already use for their displays. With its high-performance multifunctional DARO coating on CONTURAN^® glass, the company is extending the areas of application for anti-reflective products all the way to the high-end area of professional touch displays. SCHOTT is currently introducing this product to potential customers in Europe, Asia, and North America.

SCHOTT uses the so-called sol-gel coating technology for its CONTURAN^® DARO glass which provides the foundation for applying an oleophobic nanolayer in a chemically strong manner and therefore offers extreme long-term resistance. This can be seen in the mechanical resistance tests in which the DARO coating has stood up to more than 450,000 cycles, for example. “This equates to a lifespan of more than 25 years, even if the coating was to be cleaned 20 times a day,” Walther explains. “By performing long-term stress tests, we want to demonstrate the high quality of this material to our customers and show them the great benefits that our new DARO coating offers, especially in professional display applications,” he adds.

The main performance features of the DARO coating from SCHOTT:

• A coating with a combination of anti-reflective and permanent dirt-repellent properties
• Reduces visual reflections by more than 90 percent
• Creates an extremely strong surface on touch displays
• Resists more than 450,000 cases of exposure to mechanical friction
• Tested resistance against salt spray fog for more than 100 days
• Chemically inert
• Allows for displays with high contrast even in extremely light environments
• Durability