What Should Your Lens Be Made Out of?

Lenses can be made from many materials; the important part is to choose the material that meets your needs. Xymox works with many types of lens materials – supporting the application-specific solution that is just right for any touch sensor need.

Glass versus Polymer

Advantages of glass

• Extremely scratch resistant
• Feels great to the touch
• Generally no color cast from glass
• Can get anti-reflective coatings

Disadvantages of glass

• Modest impact resistance – can break
• Hard to decorate
• Expensive
• Heavy

Advantages of polymer

• Easier to decorate
• More cost effective
• Lighter than glass
• Many standard thicknesses
• Very impact resistant
• Easier to cut and shape than glass

Disadvantages of polymer

• Can have a color-cast
• Can yellow under harsh UV exposure
• More susceptible to scratching and abrasion than glass

Glass choices

• Soda-Lime glass
  • The cheapest, standard glass
• Borosilicate glass
  • Low coefficient of thermal expansion, very stable
• Chemically strengthened glass
  • Processing increases strength 6-8 times that of non-strengthened glass

Polymer choices

• Acrylic
  • Scratch resistant
  • Can be abrasion resistant coated to give improved properties
  • Generally resistant to UV yellowing
• Polycarbonate
  • Very high impact resistance
  • Easy to decorate
  • Can be hardcoated to improve scratch and abrasion resistance – without coating it’s relatively soft and easy to scratch
  • Can yellow with UV exposure

There are great choices available for lens materials. Xymox puts touch sensors on all these materials for great application-specific touch screen interfaces. Get what you want and what fits your application best.