Touch sensors replace switches

Further to its recent announcements of licensing agreements with Nissha and Samson Electro-mechanics for 3D input technology for mobile phones, Peratech Limited has announced that YFM Group managed Partnership Investment Finance has invested £1.1 million into the Company. This will be used for further research and development into Peratech’s award-winning, patented Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC) technology for touch technology solutions, as well as growing the company’s highly successful sales into overseas markets.

“We are really excited by the huge potential of Peratech and its technology,” says Mark Winderbank at YFM Group, which is the most active VC investor in UK SMEs. “Peratech’s recently announced license deals with major international companies Nissha and Samsung Electro-mechanics demonstrate how QTC can open up exciting new ways of doing things. We are proud to be able to support a fast growing British company with a truly unique technology that has a tremendous world market. Of all the possible investments that we have looked at recently, Peratech stood out because of the strength of its innovative technology and huge growth potential.”

The key to QTC’s success is that it enables traditional, old fashioned switches to be replaced with ultra reliable QTC versions that offer additional features such as no contacts to wear out and no air gap to be contaminated with water or dust. Moreover, because QTC is force sensitive, it opens up a whole new range of applications where the current flowing is directly proportional to the pressure applied. This enables a new category of touch sensitive, human machine interfaces to be created with a completely new three dimensional aspect. For example, the width of a line being drawn electronically can depend on the pressure applied, which is an ideal feature for Asian and Chinese characters, or pressing harder moves faster down into a menu structure on a mobile phone.

“In these financially challenging times, it is a real testament to both the QTC technology and the team behind it to have received funding of this level,” adds Philip Taysom, joint CEO of Peratech. “The Company has invested significant R&D efforts to understand this new class of material science that it has invented. We are now at the stage where its ability to add value and completely new innovative features, which provide significant commercial advantages, are clearly demonstrable as can be seen from the licensing deals that we are closing with Tier 1 international companies.”