Japan Display Inc. has proceeded with the development of capacitance type glass fingerprint sensors, utilizing LTPS backplane technology and touch panel technology.

The company will start mass production of the glass fingerprint sensors, aimed at the security market and specifically smart door locks.

Personal identification through fingerprints is broadly used in smartphones, but it has appeard in other devices, such as in doors. The technology will soon be also used in vehicle doors. Such applications require a high level of confidence in authenticating individuals, meaning that fingerprint sensors should detect the whole finger. JDI believes that glass fingerprint sensors can be used in those applications, since they are cheaper than silicon fingerprint sensors.

The company used its LTPS backplane technology and touch panel technology expertise gained from the smartphones to develop glass fingerprint sensors and authentication algorithms, ready for mass production. It ha already applied the sensors to
smart door locks and plans to create larger sensor sizes, product designs utilizing transparency, and flexible sensors that don’t break even when bent.