Low power touch sensor for portable and cost-sensitive applications

Following the signing of a technology-licensing agreement with Korean company ATLab, Inc., STMicroelectronics has released a family of ultra-low-power touch-sensor chips for portable applications such as mobile phones, PDAs, notebook PCs and media players, as well as for the cost-sensitive white-goods market. The ‘S-Touch’ family uses ATLab’s capacitive touch-sensing technology, which is based on a fully-digital architecture that needs no on-chip MCU, memory or firmware to implement control interfaces responsive to their users’ touch. The first products in the family are 8-channel and 12-channel devices.

This hardwired touch-sensor family complements ST’s MCU-based ‘QST’ series, which enables intelligent touch-sensitive control interfaces for more complex applications and – at the other end of the scale – in simpler products where the sensor’s MCU can also control multiple secondary functions.

STMicroelectronics, www.st.com