- Two researchers produced a transparent nail polish that turns your nail into a stylus
- This should help with issues related to “zombie fingers” and people with long nails.
- It’s not yet ready for store shelves yet
If you like to look your best with long nails or have calloused fingertips from years of working as a musician or carpenter, you know how difficult touchscreens can be to use — and you might want to hear about this new nail polish that turns your fingernail into a stylus.
This coating was developed at Centenary College of Louisiana by student Manasi Desai and her research advisor Joshua Lawrence (via LiveScience).
As Desai explains in a statement, “Our clear final polish could be applied over any manicure or even bare nails, which could also help people with calluses on their fingertips.” This means you can still enjoy your favorite nail art and use touch screens, or if you don’t normally paint your nails, you can coat them with this polish without it being obvious.
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Modern touchscreens rely on a thin, imperceptible grid of wires carrying a subtle electrical charge. Since skin can slightly conduct electricity – unlike the glass on your phone’s screen – the electrical charge at the point where your finger touches the screen stays on your fingertip.
Various sensors attached to the metal grid can then detect the disturbance of your finger and use that information to understand precisely where your finger touched the screen and how that touch should translate into an action on the screen.
If your fingers are calloused – for example after many years as a musician or carpenter – then the conductive properties of your fingers change and may mean that you cannot use touchscreens. This phenomenon is called zombie fingers.
Meanwhile, long nails can make it difficult to touch a screen properly with your fingertips, and your nails don’t share the conductive nature of your skin. But with this new coating, it will.
There have been attempts to turn a nail into a stylus in the past, but these efforts would add metal particles or carbon to the polish, which, while effective, can be dangerous if inhaled during the manufacturing process (via SciTechDaily). The other downside is that these polishes have a dark or metallic finish, which can limit their appeal from a style standpoint.
So the Centenary College of Louisiana duo researched clear conductive nail polish options using trial and error — experimenting with 13 commercially available clear polishes and more than 50 additives.
The end result combined varnish with modified taurine – a substance you can find in various dietary supplements and in Red Bull – and ethanolamine – a simple compound with a wide range of applications in cosmetic, agricultural and industrial processes.
Alone, these chemicals aren’t perfect, but combined, they are capable of making your nail register as a touch on a smartphone.
Speaking to LiveScience, Lawrence revealed that it will likely be a while before their polish hits shelves. To begin with, the effect only lasts a few hours because the ethanolamine evaporates quickly. The varnish also isn’t 100% effective (meaning some hits still don’t register), and the least toxic formulation so far isn’t as clear as researchers would like.
They are still working on the final formula, with Lawrence saying: “For now we have good proof of concept material, but we need to do a lot more work! »
When they do, just make sure you don’t press your fingernail too hard on your screen: on a foldable phone, you could leave a large fingerprint or permanent scratch, and that won’t be ideal.
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