Apple Inc.

Chun-Hao Tung

Sunggu Kang

John Z Zhong

Isaac W Chan

Albert Lin

Fletcher R Rothkopf

Cheng Kai Chen

Enkhamgalan Dorjgotov

Masato Kuwabara

Wenqing Dai

Sudip Mondal

Sz-Hsiao Chen

Ji Hun Choi

Victor H Yin

Massoud Badaye

Prathit Bugnait

Jeffrey M Weisse

Qian Zhao

Steven Porter Hotelling

Paul Stephen Drzaic

Sumant Ranganathan

Wei Lin

Po-Jui Chen

Nathan K Gupta

Zhen Zhang

Pey-Jiun Ko

Hao Zhang

Dhaval Chandrakant Patel

Mookyung Son

Yuta Kuboyama

Wesley William Zuber

Mengshu Huang

Steven M Scardato

Sagar Rajiv Vaze

Christopher L Boitnott

Ashray Vinayak Gogte

Eugene C Cheung

Xiaofan Niu

Wookyung Bae

Xiaoqi Zhou

Kiarash Vakhshouri

Ramachandran Chundru

Isaac Wing-Tak Chan

Jinghong Chen

Cyrus Y Liu

Yindar Chuo

Sungwon Bae

Se Hyun Ahn

Kevin F Holz

Rasmi R Das

Wencong Zhu

James Edward Alexander Pedder

Steve L Terry

Robert W Rumford

Hui Zhou

Viswa B Pilla

Alexander A Penn

Der-Song Lin

Yi Gu

Seung Hoon Lee

A touch sensor panel can include a first touch electrode of a first type associated with a first touch node on the touch sensor panel, the first touch electrode electrically connected to a first trace configured to couple the first touch electrode to first touch circuitry, and a second touch electrode of a second type associated with the first touch node on the touch sensor panel, the second touch electrode electrically connected to a second trace configured to couple the second touch electrode to second touch circuitry. The first touch electrode can be formed by a solid and transparent conductive material in the touch sensor panel, the solid and transparent conductive material configured to provide shielding with respect to circuitry external to the touch sensor panel. The second touch electrode can be formed by a first metal mesh material in the touch sensor panel.

Flexible touch sensor panel with metal mesh and solid conductor

Touch screens with ultra-thin stack-ups can provide for a lower profile device, can improve the optical image on the display by reducing the display to cover glass distance, and can reduce the weight of the device. In some examples, the thickness of the touch screen stack-up can be reduced and/or the border region reduced, by removing the flex circuit connection from the stack-up. A flexible substrate can be used to enable routing of touch electrodes to touch circuitry. In some examples including a shield layer, the thickness of the touch screen stack-up can be reduced by routing the shield layer to a shield electrode on the touch sensor panel. The shield layer can then be routed to touch sensing circuitry via the flexible substrate. In some examples, the touch sensor panel or a portion of thereof can be integrated with the polarizer.

Ultra-thin touch sensors

Display layers and touch sensor layers may be overlapped by enclosure walls in an electronic device. The electronic device may have a front wall and opposing rear wall and curved sidewalls. The front wall and the curved sidewalls may be formed from a glass layer or other transparent member. A touch sensor layer and display layer may extend under the glass layer with curved sidewalls. A touch sensor layer may also extend under the opposing rear wall. A foldable electronic device may have a flexible transparent wall portion that joins planar transparent walls. Components may be interposed between the transparent planar walls and opaque walls. Display and touch layers may be overlapped by the transparent walls and the transparent flexible wall portion. Touch sensor structures may also be overlapped by the opaque walls.

Electronic devices with display and touch sensor structures

Touch sensor panel configurations for reducing wobble error for a stylus translating on a surface over and between electrodes of the touch sensor panel are disclosed. In some examples, electrodes with more linear signal profiles are correlated with lower wobble error. In some examples, diffusing elements formed of floating segments of conductive materials can diffuse signal from a stylus to a plurality of electrodes, thus, making the signal profiles associated with the electrodes more linear. In addition, diffusing elements can be configured to improve the optical uniformity of the touch sensor panel. In some examples, the diffusing elements can be formed on the same layer as floating dummy pixels and resemble a plurality of merged floating dummy pixels.

Merged floating pixels in a touch screen

An electronic device with a force sensing device is disclosed. The electronic device comprises a user input surface defining an exterior surface of the electronic device, a first capacitive sensing element, and a second capacitive sensing element capacitively coupled to the first capacitive sensing element. The electronic device also comprises a first spacing layer between the first and second capacitive sensing elements, and a second spacing layer between the first and second capacitive sensing elements. The first and second spacing layers have different compositions. The electronic device also comprises sensing circuitry coupled to the first and second capacitive sensing elements configured to determine an amount of applied force on the user input surface. The first spacing layer is configured to collapse if the applied force is below a force threshold, and the second spacing layer is configured to collapse if the applied force is above the force threshold.

Force sensing architectures

A touch sensor panel can include a silver nanowire touch electrodes formed in a silver nanowire layer on the substrate. In some examples, the touch sensor panel can include one or more anticorrosion layers to protect silver nanowire layer from ionization. In some examples, the silver nanowires include electrochemically stable outer shells that protect the silver nanowires from ionization. Additionally or alternatively, the touch sensor panel can including one or more anti-static layers to protect against electrostatic discharge (ESD). Additionally or alternatively, one or more anticorrosion layers and/or one or more antistatic layers can be formed with a passivation layer therebetween. The passivation layer, one or more anticorrosion layers and/or one or more antistatic layers can then be laminated to the silver nanowire layer to prevent corrosion and/or ESD events in the silver nanowire layer during the fabrication of the touch sensor panel.

Touch sensor panels with silver nanowire-based touch electrodes

A touch sensor panel is disclosed. In some examples, the touch sensor panel includes a substrate including a first side and a second side, a passivation layer, a first plurality of touch electrodes formed on the first side of the substrate, and a second plurality of touch electrodes formed on the second side of the substrate. In some examples, a component of the touch sensor panel, other than the first plurality of touch electrodes and the second plurality of touch electrodes, is configured to prevent light configured to activate the passivation layer during fabrication of the touch sensor panel from being transmitted from the first side of the substrate to the second side of the substrate.

Light transmissivity-controlled touch sensor panel design

A touch sensor panel is disclosed. The touch sensor panel can include a first substrate layer; a first electrode layer comprising one or more of a touch electrode and a trace configured to couple the touch electrode to sense circuitry, the first electrode layer located on a first side of the first substrate layer; a second electrode layer located on the first side of the first substrate layer; a passivation layer disposed in between the first electrode layer and the second electrode layer; and a third electrode layer located on a second side of the first substrate layer, different from the first side of the first substrate layer. The first electrode layer can be comprised of a first conductive material, the second electrode layer can be comprised of a second conductive material, and the third electrode layer can be comprised of a third conductive material. The touch sensor panel may not include a second substrate layer between the first substrate layer and the second electrode layer.

Touch sensor panel with top and/or bottom shielding

A display may have an active area in which pixels display images through a transparent display layer. An opaque masking material may be formed in an inactive border area adjacent to the active area. The opaque masking layer may include particles such as carbon black particles to provide the opaque masking layer with a dark appearance. The color of the opaque masking layer may be adjusted by incorporating additional particles such as titanium oxide particles. Particle size for the carbon black particles and the index of refraction of the opaque masking layer may be adjusted to reduce reflectance in the inactive border area. A transparent conductive layer may be supported by the transparent display layer. Index-of-refraction matching layers may be interposed between the transparent conductive layer and the transparent display layer. The opaque masking layer may be interposed between the matching layers in the inactive border area.

Electronic device with low reflectance and color matched display border

An apparatus is disclosed. In some examples, the apparatus comprises a cover substrate having a front surface, a first edge and a first cavity adjacent to the first edge. In some examples, the apparatus comprises a plurality of touch sensor electrodes disposed opposite the front surface of the cover substrate. In some examples, the apparatus comprises at least one touch sensor edge electrode disposed within the first cavity on a surface that is angled relative to the front surface of the cover substrate. In some examples, at least one touch sensor edge electrode is disposed on an outward facing curved surface of the first cavity. In some examples, the plurality of touch sensor electrodes are formed from a first conductive material and the at least one touch sensor edge electrode is formed from a second conductive material. In some examples, the first conductive material is transparent, and the second conductive material is non-transparent. In some examples, the second conductive material is formed on a black mask layer disposed around a perimeter of a bottom surface of the cover substrate.

Touch sensor pattern for edge input detection

Touch sensor panels typically include a plurality of layers that can be stacked on top of each other. When the touch sensor panel is used in a bright environment, incident light can hit the interfaces between those layers of the stackup having mismatched refractive indices and can reflect off those interfaces. The light reflected from those interfaces can give rise to the appearance of fringes on the touch sensor panel, which can be visually distracting. In order to reduce the appearance of these fringes, embodiments of the disclosure are directed to the addition of an index matching passivation layer between a conductive layer of traces and an adhesive layer in the touch sensor panel stackup.

Touch sensor panel having an index matching passivation layer

High aspect ratio touch sensor panels are disclosed in which multiple row electrode blocks can be formed in a single row within an active area of the touch sensor panel, each row electrode block including a plurality of vertically adjacent row electrodes, or in some instances only one row electrode. In addition, each column electrode can be separated into multiple column electrode segments, each column electrode segment being vertically oriented and formed in a different column. The column electrode segments associated with any one column electrode can be spread out so that each of these column electrodes segments can be co-located and associated with a different row electrode block.

High aspect ratio capacitive sensor panel

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Chun-Hao Tung