Setting the bar even higher
Capacitive touchscreens provide an appealing user interface for many applications. However, the real world offers challenges for any portable electronic device, and capacitive touchscreens are no exception. Chargers, displays and other electronic components can all introduce noise into a capacitive touch sensing system. At the same time, moisture and temperature changes can also have an impact on touchscreen performance.
The original Atmel maXTouch family has become the world’s highest performance, best-selling capacitive touchscreen controller. Now, the new and enhanced maXTouch E Series raises the bar with an updated capacitive touch engine (CTE) that has been supercharged with new noise avoidance and noise suppression capabilities. Every aspect of touchscreen performance is improved–including higher fidelity touch sensing, faster responsiveness, lower power consumption and thinner form factors. These enhancements also make capacitive touchscreens both easier to design-in and more cost-effective. Products that use maXTouch E Series controllers not only deliver the highest performance in the world, but they are also the most optimized.
Devices in the Atmel maXTouch E Series.
The maXTouch E Series features a complete portfolio of high-performance single-chip controllers designed to address every touchscreen size and application.
Atmel maXTouch mXT768E
The mXT768E is the industry's first 32-bit single-chip controller for touchscreens up to 12-inches. With its ability to address up to 768 nodes and its ultra low power Atmel AVR 32-bit core, the mXT768E packs a powerful punch in a small 6mm x 6mm package. This makes it ideal for high performance tablets between 6 and 12-inches. Learn more about the mXT768E.
Atmel maXTouch mXT540E
The single-chip Atmel maXTouch mXT540E, also based on the 32-bit AVR architecture, provides high performance capacitive sensing for medium-sized touchscreens between 5.5 and 8.9-inches, with 540 nodes in an 18x30 electrode configuration. Applications include smaller tablets, e-book readers, and portable navigation devices.
Atmel maXTouch mXT384E
The Atmel maXTouch mXT384E is a single-chip controller designed for mobile phones with larger screens between 4 and 4.5-inches, and smaller tablets between 5 and 5.5-inches, with 384 nodes in a 24x16 electrode configuration. Its high node density also makes it ideal for mobile phones with high pixel density displays, where it provides additional touch resolution to match the increased resolution of the display. Its 32-bit AVR core gives it high responsiveness to match its high resolution touch sensing.
Atmel maXTouch mXT224E
The original Atmel maXTouch mXT224 device established maXTouch as the leading capacitive touchscreen solution, powering some of the hottest smartphones in the world with unparalleled touchscreen performance. The new mXT224E builds on the original mXT224's success, upgrading it with the enhanced capacitive touch engine. This enables smartphones that are thinner and sleeker, with longer battery life and better screen brightness. The mXT224E supports screen sizes between 2 and 7-inches. Learn more about the mXT224E.
Atmel maXTouch E Series: Enhanced. Extended. Evolved
All devices in the maXTouch E Series feature an enhanced capacitive touch engine that takes touchscreen performance to the next level and enables new system design possibilities.
Key Features and Benefits
Noise avoidance and noise suppression
The new maXTouch E Series CTE features frequency agility that enables it to scan the touch sensor at a wider range of quiet frequencies, automatically switching between them to avoid noise. More sophisticated hardware filtering means that noise that cannot be avoided can be suppressed before it impacts measurement accuracy or response time. The results are reduced power consumption and a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
Multitouch and stylus operation
Higher SNR enables the maXTouch E Series controllers to accurately detect the lightest touch, including that of a passive conductive stylus. Together with updated algorithms, this enables a stylus of less than 2mm diameter to be identified and tracked while any finger inputs are independently reported. As all inputs can be identified, unintended touches such as those caused by a resting palm or gripping fingers can be ignored, enabling unencumbered stylus operation.
Thinner form factors
The improved noise performance in the maXTouch E Series allows the use of shield-less sensor substrates. It also enables further optimized touch surfaces such as "touch-on-lens," a technique where the sense electrodes can be patterned directly on the protective cover lens, or "on-cell" designs, where the electrodes are patterned on the color filter of the display. By eliminating layers from the touchscreen stack, it can be made considerably thinner—enabling slimmer, more appealing end products.
Brighter displays and lower power consumption
Each layer of material in the touchscreen stack can reduce the light reaching the user’s eyes from the display panel. This makes the display work harder (and use more power) to provide adequate brightness. The impact is significant as displays are the largest consumers of power in portable electronics. With maXTouch E Series controllers, fewer layers in the touchscreen stack mean the display appears brighter while using less power, enabling the use of smaller, thinner batteries.
A wider range of display panel options
Lower cost display panels tend to produce more noise. That the new maXTouch E Series CTE overcome this problem with intelligent hardware filtering, which ensures that even large noise spikes do not affect touch performance.
Better operation with noisy chargers
Low-cost and aftermarket chargers can inject significant levels of noise into a system, which can affect device operation, including the touchscreen. With its sophisticated noise handling, the new maXTouch E Series provides exceptional performance—even in the presence of severe charger noise.
Improved operation in all environments
The maXTouch E Series enhancements result in better resistance to moisture, allowing a touch to be detected through a thin moisture film or a wet finger to be tracked.
Highest performance and lowest system cost
Fewer layers in the touchscreen stack, cheaper displays, smaller batteries and cheaper accessories all mean less total cost per system. New maXTouch E Series controllers deliver this winning formula for optimized designs, enabling desirable products and lower system costs.
