Apple Inc.

Martin Paul Grunthaner

Steven Porter Hotelling

Sinan Filiz

Brian Quentin Huppi

Christopher J Butler

Charley T Ogata

John Stephen Smith

Albert Lin

Shin John Choi

Peter W Richards

Marduke Yousefpor

Lynn Richard Youngs

Seung Jae Hong

Michael Benjamin Wittenberg

Steven James Martisauskas

James E Pedder

Romain A Teil

Christian M Sauer

Dhaval Chandrakant Patel

John Z Zhong

John Greer Elias

Shahrooz Shahparnia

Christopher Tenzin Mullens

Bingrui Yang

Christoph Horst Krah

Cheng Kai Chen

Steve Porter Hotelling

Sumant Ranganathan

Benjamin B Lyon

Sunggu Kang

Lili Huang

Manu Agarwal

Tang Yew Tan

Richard Hung Minh Dinh

David A Pakula

Wei Chen

Dhaval N Shah

Andrew W Joyce

Enkhamgalan Dorjgotov

Jonathan P Ive

Duncan Robert Kerr

Matthew Dean Rohrbach

Fletcher R Rothkopf

Scott A Myers

Erik G De Jong

Giovanni Gozzini

Sawyer Isaac Cohen

Storrs Townsend Hoen

Lucy Elizabeth Browning

Jonah Alexander Harley

Ian A Spraggs

Omar Sze Leung

Yingxuan Li

Weijun Yao

Lee E Hooton

Wonjae Choi

Vivek Pant

Michael K McCord

Miguel C Christophy

Pavan Gupta

Masato Kuwabara

Nicolas P Bonnier

Sean Erik O'Connor

Vivek Katiyar

Ming L Sartee

Collin R Petty

Rui Qiao

Daniel J Bechstein

Sora Kim

Rui Jin

Henric Larsson

John R Matthews

Wayne Carl Westerman

Shih Chang Chang

Brijesh Tripathi

Kevin David Gibbs

Jiaying Wu

Christopher P Tann

Shih-Chang Chang

Erik Andrew Uttermann

Jean-Marie Bussat

Kevin J White

Michael A Cretella

Alexandre Gourevitch

Isaac W Chan

Seyed Hesameddin Najafi Shoushtari

David H C Shih

Adam Geboff

Eugene Lvovich Shoykhet

Jason C Hu

Prathit Bugnait

Shwetabh Verma

Kai Wang

William Mathews Riedel

Seyed Mohammad Navidpour

Brian H Knabenshue

David HC Shih

Tan Yew Tan

A device configured to determine the location and magnitude of a touch on a surface of the device. The device includes a transparent touch sensor that is configured to detect a location of a touch on the transparent touch sensor. The device also includes a force-sensing structure disposed at the periphery of the transparent touch sensor. The force sensor includes an upper capacitive plate and a compressible element disposed on one side of the upper capacitive plate. The force sensor also includes a lower capacitive plate disposed on a side of the compressible element that is opposite the upper capacitive plate.

Force determination based on capacitive sensing

A touch sensor panel is disclosed. The touch sensor panel includes a first layer including a plurality of electrodes of a first type that are coupled to respective traces and are configured to operate as touch sensing electrodes during a first time period. The touch sensor panel also includes a second layer including a plurality of electrodes of a second type overlapping with the respective traces of the electrodes of the first type. The electrodes of the second type are configured to operate as guard electrodes for the respective traces of the electrodes of the first type during the first time period and operate as touch sensing electrodes during a second time period.

Touch sensor panel architecture with multiple sensing mode capabilities

A touch sensor panel is disclosed. In some examples, the touch sensor panel comprises a plurality of touch node electrodes. In some examples, the touch sensor panel comprises a touch controller configured to drive and sense the plurality of touch node electrodes in a fully bootstrapped configuration to obtain a fully bootstrapped touch image, drive and sense the plurality of touch node electrodes in a second configuration, different from the fully bootstrapped configuration, to obtain a second touch image, the second touch image including an effect of water on the touch sensor panel, and determine a final touch image based on the fully bootstrapped touch image and the second touch image, the final touch image not including the effect of the water on the touch sensor panel. In some examples, the second configuration comprises a mutual capacitance configuration. In some examples, the second configuration comprises a partially bootstrapped configuration.

Pixelated self-capacitance water rejection

A touch sensitive device that includes a touch sensor having an opaque passivation layer is disclosed. The opaque passivation layer can be made from an organic or inorganic material, such as acrylic. The opaque passivation layer can be positioned in the touch sensitive device between the cover material of the device and conductive traces located on the touch sensor to hide the conductive traces from the user's view and protect the conductive traces from corrosion. Processes for making the touch sensitive devices that include a touch sensor having an opaque passivation layer are also disclosed.

Opaque thin film passivation

A compliant material, such as a conductive foam, is positioned in the dielectric or capacitive gap between drive and sense electrodes and/or other conductive elements of a capacitive and/or other force sensor, such as a TFT or other display element and a sensor assembly. The compliant material prevents damage by preventing and/or cushioning contact. The compliant material may be conductive. By being conductive and being positioned between the electrodes while still being separated from one or more of the electrodes, the compliant material also shortens the effective electrical distance between the electrodes. As a result, the force sensor may be more sensitive than would otherwise be possible while being less vulnerable to damage.

Compliant material for protecting capacitive force sensors and increasing capacitive sensitivity

A touch panel configured to compensate for negative pixel effect is disclosed. The panel can be configured to increase a capacitive sense signal, indicative of a touching or hovering object, in order to compensate for an increase in negative capacitance when the object is poorly grounded. To perform the compensation, the panel can be configured to have split sense lines so as to increase the number of electric fringe fields forming the sense signal, thereby providing a sense signal that is substantially stronger than the negative capacitance signal. Each sense line can be split into two or more strips.

Split sense lines for negative pixel conpensation

An electronic device can include an integrated touch and display chip that can operate in multiple power domains. For example, the integrated touch and display chip can operate in a guarded power domain during the touch operation and can operate in a system power domain during non-guarded display operations. In some examples, two power domains can include a guarded power domain and a system power domain, whose grounds can be differentiated by a guard buffer signal. In some examples, the guard buffer can be disposed between the integrated touch and display chip and a battery of the device. In some examples, the guard buffer can be disposed between the battery of the device and the chassis of the device.

Multi-domain touch sensing with touch and display circuitry operable in guarded power domain

A force-sensitive device for electronic device. The force inputs may be detected by measuring changes in capacitance, as measured by surface flex of a device having a flexible touchable surface, causing flex at a compressible gap within the device. A capacitive sensor responsive to changes in distance across the compressible gap. The sensor can be positioned above or below, or within, a display element, and above or below, or within, a backlight unit. The device can respond to bending, twisting, or other deformation, to adjust those zero force measurements. The device can use measure of surface flux that appear at positions on the surface not directly the subject of applied force, such as when the user presses on a part of the frame or a surface without capacitive sensors.

Force sensor incorporated into display

An input device can be integrated within an electronic device and/or operably connected to an electronic device through a wired or wireless connection. The input device can include one or more force sensors positioned below a cover element of the input device or an input surface of the electronic device. The input device can include other components and/or functionality, such as a biometric sensor and/or a switch element.

Electronic device configured to collect biometric and amount of force data when a user touches a displayed image

A device configured to sense a touch on a surface of the device. The device includes a cover and a force-sensing structure disposed below the cover. The force-sensing structure may be positioned below a display and used in combination with other force-sensing elements to estimate the force of a touch on the cover of a device.

Force determination employing sheet sensor

An electronic device that senses home button inputs through ultrasonic force sensing. The electronic device may correlate that amount of force that a user applies to the home button with a specific home button command. In certain embodiments, the system may combine the force of touch information with other information that is sensed for a particular touch to correlate the touch input with a greater number of home button commands. A home button embodiment discussed herein may include a home button image that is displayed on a touch sensitive panel. In other embodiments, a home button may be located outside of the boundaries of a touch sensitive panel.

Ultrasound-based force sensing of inputs

An optical force sensor that may compensate for environmental effects, including, for example, variations in temperature of the device or the surroundings. In some examples, two force-sensitive layers are separated by a compliant layer. The relative electrical response of the two force-sensitive layers may be used to compute an estimate of the force of a touch that reduces the effect of variations in temperature. In some examples, piezoelectric films having anisotropic strain properties are used to reduce the effects of temperature.

Temperature compensating sensor having a compliant layer separating independent force sensing substrates and sense circuitry to obtain a relative measure between the force sensing substrates

An optical force sensor, which may be used as input to an electronic device. The optical force sensor may be configured to compensate for variations in temperature using two or more force-sensitive components that are formed from materials having different temperature- and strain-dependent responses.

Temperature compensating force sensor

Growing community of inventors

Los Altos Hills, CA, United States of America

Martin Paul Grunthaner