Touchscreen bezels set to shrink according to 3M

We’ve seen the evolution of flat screen TVs moving from an inch slim to just a few mm – changing its face from LCD to LED in the process. Of course, it also didn’t hurt that the bezels of such TVs ended up getting thinner in the process as well. The same cycle seems to apply to touchscreen displays, and if what a 3M spokesperson has to say about it is true, then we could see a brand new innovation next year which will bridge the touchscreen and processor, letting them displays expand to just short of the device’s edge. This will certainly up the ante in a touchscreen display’s sexy factor, all thanks to 3M’s discovery of using silver instead of indium tin oxide (ITO) at the moment during the manufacturing process. 3M did not explain how they achieved it though, but it is nice to know that the miniaturizing process did not compromise on performance since initial tests done on early prototypes built with silver circuits resulted in much faster response rates compared to those built with ITO by a factor of 10 (six miliseconds for silver compared to ITO’s 60 ms).