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Panasonic Devises Encapsulation Material for Thinner Fingerprint Sensors

Panasonic commercialized an encapsulation material with a “high dielectric constant” for fashioning smaller and thinner fingerprint recognition sensors to be embedded in mobile devices, the company said in a Tuesday announcement. Panasonic will start “full-scale mass production” of the material…

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next month, it said. Panasonic sees fingerprint recognition features being embedded in more and more smartphones, it said. Sapphire glass conventionally has been used in the fingerprint contact part of packages for existing capacitive fingerprint recognition sensors due to its high dielectric constant, Panasonic said. But that has “drawbacks,” including the difficulty of making the sensor packages smaller and thinner to fit sleeker smartphone form factors, it said. Sapphire glass-based sensors also require complex “manufacturing processes,” it said. There’s a “booming market” for fingerprint sensors in smartphones, tablets and notebook computers, IHS said in a December report. “Their use in the iPhone 5 in 2013 was followed by adoption by many other OEMs in 2014 and 2015,” IHS said. “These sensors are becoming a standard feature in high-end smart phones, with further growth expected.”