At last! The phone screen that won’t crack when you drop it

WE all know that sinking feeling as you watch your phone slip through your fingers, knowing just what will happen when it hits the ground.

But trying to use your mobile through a screen webbed with cracks could soon be a thing of the past.

British scientists have developed an unbreakable touchscreen for smartphones, potentially saving users thousands of pounds in repairs each year.

And at a fifth of the cost of current touchscreens, the new technology – which could be rolled out on mobiles as early as 2018 – could send the prices of phones, TVs and tablets tumbling.

Currently electrodes (electrical conductors) in touch screens are

‘Will not shatter on impact’

made from indium tin oxide (ITO), a rare and expensive metal.

But indium supplies are running out, leading scientists to hunt for a new material. Physicists at the University of Sussex, working with Oxford-based microelectrics firm M-Solv, were able to create hybrid electrodes from silver nanowires and graphene. Silver nanowire is 1/10,000 the width of a human hair, while graphene is the thinnest material on earth.

They form a transparent material that is highly flexible, making it resistant to cracks and breaks, the journal Nanoscale reports. It also conducts electricity better than ITO. And at around £8 a square metre, silver nanowires and graphene is far cheaper than ITO, which costs £40 per square metre.

Alan Dalton, a professor of experimental physics at Sussex, said: ‘Scientists have long been trying to develop a phone or tablet that has a screen that will not break or shatter on impact and this new development could turn that research into a reality.’