​ST Microelectronics Launches S-Touch sensor with ATLab capacitive Touch sensing technology

China Touch screen network news, STMicroelectronics officially launched a series of new S-Touch sensors. STMicroelectronics has released a series of ultra-low power touch sensor chips after ST signed a related technology license agreement with South Korean company ATLab. The target applications of the new series of products are portable devices such as mobile phones, PDA's, notebook computers and media players, as well as the price-sensitive white goods market. The new S-Touch Series sensors adopt ATLab's capacitive Touch sensing technology, which is based on an all-digital architecture and controls the operation interface that responds to user Touch, no on-chip microcontroller, memory, or firmware is required. The first products in this series are 8-channel and 12-channel sensors.
This hardwired touch sensor series product is a useful supplement to ST's recently introduced microcontroller-based QST series products. More complex applications can realize intelligent touch sensor control interface through QST series, on the other hand, the microcontrollers inside these sensors can also control multiple auxiliary functions in simpler products. ST has two series of sensor product portfolios at the same time, and is the only manufacturer in the semiconductor market that can provide complete sensor solutions to meet the application requirements and conditions of different industries.
ST implements a hardwired finite state machine in the core of S-Touch Series sensors. The optimized silicon technology used requires very low power: the power consumption is about 1/5 to of that of a common touch sensor solution, and the power consumption in sleep mode is only 1 microampere. The line connecting the sensor and the TouchPad of the application device does not require an external resistance-capacitance network, while other sensor solutions usually require a resistance-capacitance network. The size of these sensors is very small. The 8-way input product is packaged in a 2.6x1.8 QFN16 package, which is about 80% smaller than the existing equivalent solution and has very high price competitiveness. The sampling time of this series of sensors is 2 milliseconds, which is also the fastest product on the market.
Future products will also integrate patented technologies in ST's new Xpander series logic products by assigning I/O intensive tasks to ultra-low power Xpander logic IC, this technology helps to overcome the problem that the number of input and output ports is limited in MCU-based embedded systems. This technology enables existing system processors to use various additional intelligent functions through a fast I2C interface, includes keyboard controller supporting up to 96 keys, GHOST Key, multi-key and hot key processing functions, and LED brightness control function through PWM (pulse width modulation) controller.
By integrating ST and ATLab's IP (intellectual property) technologies in this way, S-Touch will be able to realize a truly monolithic full-featured user interface controller solution, can handle standard size keyboard and resistive touch screen function with LED backlight control key and capacitive touch key. ST also plans to explore with ATLab opportunities to strengthen cooperation in advanced digital IP design services in specific fields. This technology is a supplement to ST's microcontroller-based QST series products, which guarantee to provide customers with the most touch sensor design choices, meet the needs of different product styles, materials and functions.