Cypress Korea (Country Manager Young-do Lim, www.cypress.com ) announced the industry's first single-layer touchscreen sensor solution with multi-touch capabilities.

The new SLIM® (Single-Layer Independent Multitouch) sensor delivers the accuracy of high-performance touchscreens and compatibility with true single-layer sensor panels while significantly reducing the cost of the most expensive component in a touchscreen. In addition, this sensor enables the creation of affordable touchscreen phones that provide users with the ability to perform actions requiring two or more fingers, such as pinching, zooming, swiping, dragging, swinging, or other movements.

Capacitive touchscreens are increasingly recognized as a differentiating factor for mobile devices. Many low-cost “feature phones” currently do not offer capacitive touchscreens due to cost issues or the limited touch capabilities they provide. SLIM sensors are opening up a market for new “feature phones” and affordable smartphones featuring capacitive touchscreens, including popular multi-finger gesture interfaces.

SLIM is a true single-layer ITO touchscreen sensor on a single substrate. Unlike competing solutions, this solution does not require additional insulation layers or bridges. As a result, it not only reduces costs by up to approximately 40% compared to multi-touch sensors but also significantly reduces the thickness of the sensor module. SLIM can be embedded directly into the cover glass to create the thinnest touchscreen phones.

The SLIM sensor pattern is a much more unique pattern that can eliminate the requirement for a side-bezel, which is normally about 2 mm on each side of the final product. This feature enables borderless display modules that allow OEMs to utilize larger displays without changing the mobile phone's form factor.

“The ability to provide thinner and more affordable mobile phones with true multi-touch capabilities is a tremendous advantage for our customers. Cypress is developing SLIM sensors that can utilize Gen4 controllers specifically to deliver truly outstanding performance. Feature phones with the best touchscreen interfaces will be a true differentiator in many high-volume markets,” said Lim Young-do, General Manager of Cypress Korea.
The combination of the SLIM sensor and the Gen4 controller will enable the creation of the world's thinnest touchscreen products by allowing Gen4's industry-leading noise immunity to enable a sensor-on-lens configuration that creates the display directly without shielding or air gaps.

Conventional capacitive touchscreens use two-layer sensors to deliver the precision and linearity required for today's user experience. Cypress has developed a proprietary algorithm that interfaces with a true single-layer sensor without a bridge to deliver two-layer performance for an excellent combination of user experience and sensitive pricing. The elimination of this second sensor layer enables mobile device manufacturers to reduce sensor costs by more than 40%, as sensors are often the most expensive part of a touchscreen module.