Controllers enable touchscreens for wearable market

Designers can now build thin and flexible touchscreen designs using single layer, on-cell and hybrid in-cell touchscreens with intelligent wake-up gestures and buttons. Atmel is the only supplier to provide a single platform using the company’s latest touch technology to support touchscreens for applications ranging from wearables to entry-level smartphones, super phones and tablets on a full range of stack-ups including on-cell and hybrid in-cell.

With the proliferation of touchscreens over the last five years, there has been a continued need to develop touchscreens with high touch performance, low power consumption and industrial designs with thinner screens. Furthermore, the anticipated growth of the wearables market has created a demand for small touchscreen controllers with low power consumption in small packaging. Atmel addresses this demand with devices in its new maXTouch U series packaged in an 2.5x2.6mm WLCSP.

The maXTouch U portfolio of devices supports a number features for a variety of touchscreen applications including 1.0mm passive stylus, water rejection with stylus operation, multi-finger glove touch, up to 20mm hover and low power modes down to 10µW in deep sleep for wearable applications.

“Atmel’s maXTouch U series provides all the necessary building blocks including low power and smaller form factors to enable our OEMs to differentiate their designs,” said Binay Bajaj, Senior Director of Touch Marketing, Atmel. “Our expertise in low power MCUs and innovative touch engineering have allowed us to bring a superior series of devices to market that is truly an innovative collection to drive next-gen touchscreens.”

The additional maXTouch U devices are sampling today. Production quantities for the mXT735U, mXT640U and mXT416U will be available in Q3 2015, and early Q4 2015 for the mXT336U, mXT308 and mXT144U.