Capacitive Touch Solutions for Buttons, Sliders, Wheels and Proximity

It’s time to add capacitive touch to the user interface in your next product. We offer two easy-to-implement options for creating buttons, sliders and wheels or enabling proximity detection that will enhance your product’s user experience. With devices that support up to 64 buttons, our easy-to-configure turnkey touch controllers streamline the process of replacing mechanical buttons in your product. Or, you can choose one of our microcontrollers (MCUs) with dedicated Core Independent Peripherals (CIPs), which offload the touch functionality from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) to free up system resources and reduce power consumption. Like our turnkey devices, these MCUs support both mutual- and self-capacitance measurements.

Where Can You Use Touch?

• Control panels on cooktops, ovens, washers and other household appliances
• Liquid level sensing in tanks and other containers
• Touch on metal in waterproof and/or vandalism-proof designs
• Media and audio controls on headphones and ear buds
• Presence detection in earphones/earbuds, self-lacing shoes and other advanced consumer products

• Medical device controls without openings for easy cleaning and disinfection
• Hands on Detection (HoD) and other safety features using buttons, sliders, wheels and touchpads on steering wheels
• Proximity detection in car door handles to lock and unlock a car
• Proximity detection to implement automotive backlighting

Two Technology Platforms for Your Design

We offer two easy-to-implement options for creating buttons, sliders and wheels or enabling proximity detection that will enhance your product’s user experience:

These robust and proven solutions offer reliable performance in even the most challenging applications and support capacitive touch on glass, plastics and wood. We also offer Metal over Capacitive (MoC) support for touch-on-metal surfaces. If your design needs to function in a wet or outdoor environment, you can use our products and touch libraries for MCUs to create water-tolerant or waterproof keypads and other interfaces. They can even support touch through gloved fingers.

Selecting a Technology Platform

Why Choose Microchip as Your Touch Partner?

Our portfolio of products offers these key performance and design advantages:;