It's tin so thin it's transparent. It reduces panel brightness/whiteness a little which is why almost all the early eink had no touch and then IR touch (neither has extra layers).
The later Carta screens can have the touch integrated by E ink Corp for a slight contrast improvement (presumably on the top of the light-pipe layer. Other capacitive touch is using a 3rd party panel/layer on top of the eink light-pipe layer for the front lighting.
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