Automotive touchscreen controller series offers broader display size coverage

Microchip Technology has expanded its maXTouch M1 family of touchscreen controllers to bring reliable and secure touch detection to an even greater range of automotive displays, now covering free-form widescreen format displays up to 42" down to small compact screens in the 2" to 5" range. The ATMXT3072M1-HC and ATMXT288M1 products are designed to work with a wide variety of display sizes, while supporting emerging technologies such as OLEDs and microLEDs.

The M1 controllers utilise the company's proprietary Smart Mutual touch acquisition scheme and advanced algorithms to boost the touch SNR by up to 15dB compared to previous generations. This technology is engineered to deliver reliable touch detection even on integrated touch sensors exposed to high capacitive loads and significant display noise coupling. This capability is especially critical for large, thin displays such as on-cell OLEDs, where embedded touch electrodes are subjected to higher capacitive loads and increased noise coupling, raising the risk of false or missed touch detections with other capacitive solutions.

"Fuelled by evolving user expectations and the rise of software-defined vehicles, automotive cockpit displays are rapidly changing, and OEMs are pushing the boundaries in size, shape and technology to deliver more immersive and intuitive user experiences," said Giovanni Fontana, director of Microchip's human machine interface division. "This expansion of our maXTouch M1 family addresses the complexities of integrating touch into these next-generation displays, offering robust and secure touch detection for a diverse array of formats."

The ATMXT3072M1-HC is designed for large, continuous touch sensor designs that cover both the cluster and centre information display (CID), addressing the requirements of left-hand and right-hand drive vehicles with a single hardware design. This can help eradicate the necessity for dedicated hardware designs by the OEM and simplify global automotive market support. The continuous touch sensor design maintains uniform optical properties regardless of the ambient lighting environment. The host-client solution appears as a single maXTouch device to the host MCU, streamlining system design by removing the need for an external MCU to merge touch coordinates; maXTouch client interaction is managed by the maXTouch host device.

For small screens, the ATMXT288M1 is designed to fulfil the increasing demand for compact automotive display solutions, such as conventional analogue clocks and AI driver assistants, where physical space constraints are critical. A Thin Profile Fine-Pitch Ball Grid Array (TFBGA60) package delivers a 20% reduction in PCB area compared to the previous smallest automotive-qualified maXTouch product. Notably, the ATMXT288M1 is the first TFBGA package introduced in the M1 family, making it well-suited for space-sensitive applications utilising OLED/microLED technologies.