U.are.U Coating Options

 

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends the use of coating technologies
to improve the ability to capture fingerprints from dry fingers (see NIST Mobile ID Device Best Practices Recommendation).

U.are.U Coatings for Different Environments

Per NIST's recommendation, DigitalPersona offers two coating options for its U.are.U 4500 series of fingerprint sensors to suit different environmental and application needs:

 

 

U.are.U 4500
Standard Coating

U.are.U 4500 (NC)
No Coating

Optimized for

Office or Light Commercial environments (needing the highest readability)

  • Single-user/several-user applications
  • Replaceable, plug-in peripheral

Industrial environments (needing the highest durability)

  • Many-user applications
  • Public facing
  • Harsh environments

Recommended Uses

Unattended applications

  • Office desktop
  • Light Commercial (POS, Healthcare)

Attended applications

  • Time & attendance
  • Public-facing authentication
  • Banking – client/member-facing

Readability & Durability

Highest levels of readability

  • Across wide demographic
  • Excels at handling hard-to-read prints

Highest levels of durability

  • Tolerates strong cleansers
  • Good readability for attended apps

Clean with

Cellophane tape

Cellophane tape or
cleansing/antiseptic liquids

 

Fingerprint Readability

Fingerprint scanning is affected by a variety of factors, some that can be controlled and others that cannot:

  • Age - As people age, they lose collagen which makes their fingerprint harder to read.
  • Occupation - Manual laborers can sometimes wear down fingerprints on one or more fingers.
  • Ethnicity and Gender - Some women and ethnicities have very faint fingerprints.
  • Environment - Extremely dry environments cause fingers to become dry.
  • Hygiene - Frequent hand washing or use of hand-sanitizers ca dry out the skin, making fingerprints harder to read.

People with difficult-to-read fingerprints may wish to press slightly harder, hold their finger on the reader slightly longer, touch their forehead before touching the reader (skin oils aid in readability) or register and use one of their other fingers. More information on how application developers can handle hard-to-read fingerprints is available in DigitalPersona's Best Practices Guide.