Capacitive Touch is the fastest growing market segment for Human Machine interfaces. Capacitive Touch sensing gives designers freedom to create innovative, intuitive and attractive user interfaces that differentiate their products and add consumer appeal. Capacitive touch controls are more rugged and less prone to failure than conventional switches since there are no moving parts to wear out. Furthermore, because the sense electrodes are located behind the touch panel surface, it is easy to design products that are sealed from the external environment to prevent the ingress of moisture or other contaminants.
Atmel selected Quantum Research Group technology for its entry into the capacitive touch sensing market after evaluating all the available technologies by first licensing their technology in 2007 and moving to acquire the company in 2008. Quantum has used parts from Atmel for many years and has successfully established capacitive touch sense functionality in many markets such as Consumer, Industrial, Automotive and lately in handheld consumer and mobile phone applications. With the acquisition of Quantum Research Group Atmel has established itself as a major player in the capacitive touch sensing market.
Traditional challenges for capacitive touch user interfaces have been the ability to maintain fault free operation when the environment changes.
This can be changes in temperature or humidity, presence of dirt on the sensor, or simply a glove on the hand touching the button. Quantums innovative charge transfer technology gives sufficent resolution and noise tolerance to apply advanced filtering algorithms that compensate for all changes under normal operating conditions. The run-time calibration is so efficient that it compensates not only for environmental changes for the end user, but also changes during production. When you have calibrated your device for your application once, there is no need to apply production line calibration as the device itself compensates for tolerances in overlay thickness, PCB manufacturing, and component values.
