A new form of OLED micro-display can reportedly read “even of smallest sweat pores” on your finger. The invention comes from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany.
The first prototypes coming from Fraunhofer, have native resolutions of 1600 dpi, which the institute says is three times more than what is required by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The technology basically employs the OLED micro-displays as a light source on top of a microchip. This light source illuminates the finger and the chip analyses the reflected light. “We have used an extra-thin encapsulation for the chip of this fingerprint sensor. Thereby the distance between finger and image sensor has been minimized and the fingerprint can be captured excellently. Thus, an additional imaging optics is not necessary for this application,” said Bernd Richter, deputy division manager for OLED microdisplays and sensors at Fraunhofer FEP.
Further, the OLED microdisplays can read beyond the papillary lines on your finger, to the sweat pores. This makes them more secure and difficult to trifle with. This is achieved via higher spatial resolution, which when considered alongside the thinness of these chips, makes them all the more revolutionary.
While under glass fingerprint scanners aren’t particularly new, there’s a difference to be noted here. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is one of the first smartphones to employ such a scanner, but it has done so on the back of the device. An OLED microdisplay may allow fingerprint scanners to be integrated beneath displays, which would help change smartphone designs.
Of course, Fraunhofer’s technology is only in its prototype phase right now, meaning it’ll take quite some time to make it commercially available.
Source: DisplayDaily