The Science Behind Touchscreen Gloves Might Surprise You

Products like touchscreen gloves are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to take them for granted. But have you ever considered how these modern marvels actually work?

While wearing a pair on a trip to Copper Mountain, it struck me that I had no idea what tech made it possible to use my smartphone with gloves on. So I decided to look into it and save you a trip down the rabbit hole. Here’s what I found.

The tech behind the touch

There are two types of tech when it comes to touchscreen-compatible gloves: resistive and capacitive.

Resistive tech uses pressure to detect touch commands. Usually, the screen of a smart device has two layers: the first is a base layer made of glass or plexiglass, and the second is a transparent conductive layer.

When you press the screen, you push the top layer into the bottom layer. Using this pressure point, the resistive device identifies the location where the two layers are touching and processes it as the location for your touch command. A common use of resistive tech is in ATMs, checkout stands and terminals — the hard plastic top layer makes them much more durable than capacitive ones (but less responsive).

Capacitive touchscreen tech works differently. Rather than identifying commands using pressure, it relies on capacitance (the ability of a system to store an electric charge).

Photo by Scott Seiver for Gear Patrol

Capacitive touchscreen devices feature a top layer of glass that’s coated with a transparent conductive material, usually indium tin oxide (ITO).

When you press the display interface, your finger will absorb some of the electricity flowing through the conductive material, which the device uses as the location of your touch command. This is the tech present in nearly all smartphones, tablets and similar devices.

The TL;DR? When you touch the surface of a capacitive device with touchscreen-compatible gloves, the fingertip with the conductive material acts as a bare finger, absorbing the current and transferring the information from the finger placement to the device.

As for those time when the screen doesn’t seem to do a damn thing no matter how hard you press … it’s probably a resistive tech-based screen.

Material world

So, what’s in your glove that allows it to conduct electricity? Different kinds of conductive material are woven into or coated onto the fingertips or thumb.

Usually, it’s copper yarn — lightweight, highly conductive and commonly available. But some gloves also use aluminum or thermal paste, the latter being the very thing used in computers to protect against heat damage to internal components.

With all materials, the common thread is their ability to absorb the electric current generated by the touchscreen, similar to how your finger would without the glove.

The wonder of touchscreen-compatible gloves is one we don’t often appreciate; we accept the science for what it is and take for granted our ability to stay connected and protected at the same time.

But if you’ve made it this far, next time you grab your gloves and send a text, you’ll be that much wiser.

Related Topics