Sick of greasy fingerprints smudging your pristine iPhone or iPad? Wish Apple would come up with a tiny vacuum with a practically microscopic nozzle to suction out the vast rivulets of grease and oil that flows between the furrows of your digits’ epidermis? No need to go crazy: Apple’s already working on fingerprint resistant coatings for future iPhones and iPads.
Patently Apple reports on the oleophobic coating Apple wants to slather future devices in:
Apple states that to prevent the deposition of oils on an electronic device surface, an oleophobic ingredient could be bonded to the electronic device surface. The oleophobic ingredient could be provided as part of a raw liquid material in one or more concentrations. To avoid adverse reactions due to exposure to air, heat, or humidity, the raw liquid material can be placed in a bottle purged with an inert gas during the manufacturing process.
The bottle could be placed in a liquid supply system having a mechanism for controlling the amount of raw liquid material that passes through the liquid supply system. Upon reaching the vaporizing unit, the liquid could be vaporized and the oleophobic ingredient within the liquid can then be deposited on the electronic device component surface. As the liquid supply is drained from the bottle, additional inert gas is supplied in its place to further prevent contamination.
As far as I’m concerned, Apple can’t realize this patent soon enough. I’m sick of my iPad’s touch display looking like a bathroom mirror in some bus station mere hours after I clean it.
