Apple Inc.

Ashray Vinayak Gogte

Christophe Blondin

Warren S Rieutort-Louis

Yuchi Che

Alexandre Gourevitch

Ricardo A Peterson

John Z Zhong

Steven Porter Hotelling

Tsung-Ting Tsai

Sumant Ranganathan

Abbas Jamshidi Roudbari

Sunggu Kang

Chun-Hao Tung

Albert Lin

Hao Zhang

Chuang Qian

Ramachandran Chundru

Xiaoqi Zhou

Yufei Zhao

Robert Leo Sheridan

Sebastian Knitter

Michael H Lim

Yurii Morozov

Vipul Chawla

Sudip Mondal

Matthew Dominic Hollands

Warren S A Rieutort-Louis

Wencong Zhu

Kenny Kim

Matthew J Schwendeman

Hui Zhou

Alexander A Penn

Viswa B Pilla

Yue Qu

Yoann J Lanet

In some examples, a touch screen includes a first region corresponding to a region of the touch screen without touch electrodes; a second region corresponding to a region of the touch screen with a first conductive material (e.g., solid metal) with a first density in a first conductive layer; and a third region corresponding to a region of the touch screen with a second conductive material (e.g., metal mesh) with a second density, lower than the first density, in the first conductive layer. In some examples, the second region circumscribes the first region, and the third region circumscribes the second region. Some touch electrodes include a portion of the first conductive material in the second region and a portion of the second conductive material in the third region. Such touch electrodes can be routed using the first conductive material in the first conductive layer around the first region.

Touch electrode architecture for touch screen including touch electrode-free region

Touch sensor panels/screens can include metal mesh touch electrodes and routing in the active area. In some examples, the touch sensor panel/screen can include row electrodes and column electrodes disposed over the active area of the display. In some examples, the routing traces for the row electrodes and/or column electrodes can be disposed in a border region and some of the routing traces for the row electrodes and/or column electrodes can be disposed in the active area. In some examples, some row electrodes can be shaved down to create an offset from the edge of the active area to accommodate routing traces in the active area. In some examples, the row electrodes can be formed in a first metal mesh layer and some routing traces in the active area can be formed in a second metal mesh layer, different from the first metal mesh layer.

Active area routing for touch electrodes

Touch electrode architecture techniques can be used to reduce or eliminate metal mesh within the one or more high-transmittance regions of a touch screen including one or more high-transmittance regions. In some examples, one or more optical devices can be integrated with a touch screen such that light associated with the one or more optical devices passes through one or more layers of the touch screen. In some such examples, to avoid degrading performance of the optical devices, one or more high-transmittance regions can be used. Additionally or alternatively, in some examples, the high-transmittance can be achieved using touch electrode architecture techniques that use transparent or semi-transparent materials instead of opaque metal mesh within the high-transmittance regions.

Touch electrode architecture for high-transmittance touch screen

In some examples, a touch screen can include touch sense electrodes coupled to touch sense circuitry and drive lines that couple display pixels to display circuitry. In some examples, the touch screen can include display lines oriented along a first axis (e.g., vertically) and display lines oriented along a second axis (e.g., horizontally) that is orthogonal to the first axis. In some examples, the touch screen can include touch sense electrodes oriented along the second axis at locations of display lines oriented along the first axis and touch sense electrodes oriented along the first axis at locations of display liens oriented along the second axis.

Touch screen including touch electrodes and display circuitry

A display may have both a full pixel density region and a pixel removal region with a plurality of high-transmittance areas that overlap an optical sensor. Each high-transmittance area may be devoid of thin-film transistors and other display components. To improve transmission while maintaining satisfactory touch sensing performance, one or more segments of the touch sensor metal in the pixel removal region may have a reduced width relative to the touch sensor metal in the full pixel density region and/or one or more segments of the touch sensor metal in the pixel removal region may be omitted relative to the touch sensor metal in the full pixel density region. To mitigate a different appearance between the pixel removal region and the full pixel density region at off-axis viewing angles, the position of the touch sensor metal in the pixel removal region may be tuned.

Devices with displays having transparent openings and touch sensor metal

A touch sensor panel is disclosed. In some examples, the touch sensor panel includes drive electrodes and sense electrodes, wherein the drive electrodes and sense electrodes form touch nodes. In some examples, touch nodes include differently-sized drive and/or sense electrodes, and changes to the size or quantity of reference or floating electrodes disposed within the drive and/or sense electrodes are used to substantially balance the areas of the drive and/or sense electrodes in a given touch node.

Rectangular touch node design for metal mesh on-cell technology

A touch sensor panel is disclosed. In some examples, the touch sensor panel comprises a first layer including a plurality of drive lines including drive electrodes, wherein the drive lines are configured to be coupled to drive circuitry during touch sensing on the touch sensor panel. In some examples, the first layer includes a plurality of sense lines including sense electrodes, wherein the sense lines are configured to be coupled to sense circuitry during the touch sensing on the touch sensor panel. In some examples, the first layer includes a plurality of first shielding electrodes, wherein the first shielding electrodes are disposed between the drive electrodes and the sense electrodes. In some examples, the touch sensor panel comprises a second layer, different than the first layer, including one or more bridges electrically coupling at least two of the first shielding electrodes together.

Single layer touch sensor panel architecture

Touch sensor configurations for reducing electrostatic discharge events in the border area of a touch sensor panel is disclosed. Touch sensors (e.g., electrodes formed on the cover material and/or the opaque mask) can be susceptible to certain events such as arcing and discharge/joule heating, which may negatively affect touch sensor performance. Examples of the disclosure can include increasing the trace width, spacing, and/or thickness in the border area relative to the trace width, spacing, and/or thickness in the visible/active area along one or more sides of the touch sensor panel. In some examples, touch electrodes can be located exclusively in the visible/active areas along one or more sides of the touch sensor panel, while dummy sections can be included in both the border and visible/active areas. Additionally or alternatively, one or more gaps between adjacent touch electrodes in the border area or serpentine routing can be included.

Back of cover touch sensors

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Ashray Vinayak Gogte