Smartphone Screen Scanner Insights from Patents

US9122349 illustrates a new image sensor panel (ISP) that can be easily integrated with a display panel and can capture graphical, textual, or other information from the two-dimensional surface of an information bearing substrate without having to focus. The new image sensor panel enables a smartphone screen to scan business card, document images, and capture fingerprints.

FIG. 1 illustrates a sectional view of the smartphone screen that includes the ISP and a backlight module. The ISP includes transparent areas such that the light source generated from the backlight module can penetrate. The light source is then reflected from the object. The reflected light optically carries information and can be detected by photosensitive pixels formed on the ISP.

FIG. 2 illustrates a plane view of the image sensor panel. The ISP 100 includes a transparent substrate 110, an array of sensor pixels 120, and several column conductive lines (columns) 130 and row conductive lines (rows) 140 electrically coupled with the sensor pixels 120. Sensor pixels 120 can be formed proximate intersections of columns 130 and rows 140. The sensor pixels 120 can be arranged on the first region of substrate 110 to form a lattice structure. The ISP 100 is optically transparent at non-sensor pixel regions (i.e., other than the first region).

FIG. 3 illustrates a sectional view of a sensor pixel 120 of the image sensor panel 100 in FIG. 2. The sensor pixel can be formed on a TFT backplane.

©2016 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/