광원을 내장한 펜의 출력광과 광 도파로의 광 결합을 이용하는 터치 패널 장치의 내부 광 결합 구조 설계

Abstract

In this paper, an optical touch panel device is newly proposed, with operating principle based on the optical coupling between a pointing pen having a built-in light source and perpendicularly crossed optical waveguide arrays. In order to enable an external light to couple into a waveguide core, the auxiliary pyramidal structures are introduced into all intersecting points located periodically along optical waveguides. The shape is optimized for minimizing the unwanted propagation loss due to the same structure by a ray tracing method. For the optical waveguide with the size of 50×50 μm2, the bottom width, height, and slope angle of the optimized pyramidal structure are 50 μm, 22.5 μm, and 42°, respectively. The optical coupling efficiency of about 97.8% and the average propagation loss of 0.3 dB/mm were achieved for the optimized touch panel. Finally, it is found from the tolerance analysis that tilting of the pen up to ±12° can be allowed.