Taifang Tech, a pioneer in force touch technologies, has been developing an ultra-thin haptic-touch trackpad module for the next generation of notebook PCs.
“Since the three Lenovo notebooks use our forcepad solution, we’ve keep developing our Elastic Wave force solutions” said Charles, CEO of Taifang, “Our commitment to satisfying customers motived us to keep improving and innovating.
Taifang provided a fantastic seamless design forcepad solution for Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro13s which started selling at Christmas 2019. 4 years after Apple launched its 1st forcepad, the Windows series notebook finally caught up this innovation with this new Elastic Wave technology which did not infringe the forcepad patent from Apple, and also achieved the first seamless C-cover design for notebook.
On Jan 1st 2020, the Yoga pro 14s/14c, also brought Elastic Wave technology to the premium models of Lenovo notebook.
Sensors detect the elastic wave signal generated by the contact, and realize the tactile recognition according to the corresponding relationship of the position, force and pattern of the signals.
By using self-developed Elastic Wave based Touch/Force Sensing technologies, Taifang intends to satisfy notebook PC makers’ rising demand for rich haptic touch experiences in novel industrial designs sporting smaller, slimmer form factors.
Meeting the requirements for high reliability, perfect consistency, ultra-low-power and smaller size, Taifang makes it the ideal solution for next forcepad module.
What will the next generation of laptop touchpad with force touch function look like?
Trend 1: Large-size touchpad
Leading OEMs are all planning large-size touchpads. The touchpad length grows from 100mm to 120mm, to 150mm to 160mm, and even ultra-large size of 300mm which covers the whole C-deck. Increasingly bigger touchpad can help laptops to play a greater role as productivity tools. However, user experience of traditional clickpad gets worse when the size is getting larger because mechanical buttons will create big gap when pressing down. Forcepad can solve this problem very well and becomes a must have feature.
Trend 2: Ultra-thin laptop design
Laptops are getting thinner and thinner, while the battery capacity is getting larger and larger. As a result, all OEMs are seeking for thinner forcepad module design. Some OEMs have set 2 mm or even thinner as the forcepad module requirement. In this condition, the strain gage solutions won’t work since there is not enough deformation space. Other solutions which need bracket design also won’t since it will be very challenging and even impossible to meet the thickness requirement with a bracket design.
Taifang’s Competitive Advantages in Large-Size and Ultra-Thin Forcepad
Taifang’s elastic wave force solution provides the best force performance with few force sensors and simple design, even for large size.
For windowed type forcepad, only 4 force sensors can cover any size design. For seamless design forcepad, 8 force sensors can cover the ultra large 300mm forcepad. Few force sensors mean simple design and low cost.
No bracket is needed. As a result, total force solution thickness can be 2.0mm. It also has an ultra-thin design of 1.5mm.
Taifang’s force sensors and IC are assembled by SMT. It’s easy to design and manufacture.
Yield rate is high due to simple design and rich MP experience.
Force uniformity of both single level force and multi-level force are < 5%, no matter it’s middle size or large size design.
Taifang Tech was founded in 2015, with its headquarter in Beijing, and branches in Taiwan, Japan, and the US. Taifang is the first and the only seamless forcepad MP supplier in the world.
Elastic wave is a kind of mechanical wave which is generated and propagated inside any rigid object (eg: Glass, PMMA) when a contact or hit event happens, such as pressing or tapping on the surface of glass. It is a fundamental physical property of rigid materials, so Taifang’s force solution supports various C cover materials like glass, mylar, PMMA, etc.
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