CrucialTec has officially announced that it has won a US patent for a transparent sensor system allowing for in-display fingerprint scanning on smartphones and other devices.

The confirmation comes a little over a month after The Investor reported that the company had won such a patent, though it isn’t clear if CrucialTec’s announcement concerns the same intellectual property. In any case, CrucialTec says the system, dubbed “DFS”, involves the use of transparent transistors, wires, and electrodes, all of which are integrated into a panel that can be placed between a device’s cover screen and its display.

Now, a company official says it is in “talks with some global clients to commercialize the fingerprint tech in the whole area of a smartwatch screen and a certain part of a smartphone display,” according to a new report from The Investor.

The announcement comes amid growing buzz over in-display fingerprint sensor technology, seen as the next front in mobile fingerprint scanning. Goodix announced that it had developed such a system at this year’s Mobile World Congress, but that has yet to be realized in a commercially available device; meanwhile, Apple’s next smartphone is thought to be facing production delays over the difficulties involved in integrating Touch ID into its display.

Source: The Investor