Touch user interfaces have made significant advances in the consumer electronics market particularly for mobile phones and notebook computers, opening the door for adoption in other applications including white goods, computer peripherals, medical equipment, and instrumentation. Synaptics made its debut in the home appliance market earlier this year with the launch of the Samsung Hauzen ZERO air conditioner.
The standout products on day three of the SID 2010 conference is Universal Display's new PHOLED display architecture with a unique four-color, sub-pixel design, which promises to drive commercial development of all-phosphorescent active-matrix OLEDs and Sony's tiny rollable OLED display that can wrap around a pencil.
Smaller distributors were the only ones to post sales gains in 2009. Interestingly, two of the five distributors that posted growth last year -- Interstate Connecting Components and Sherburn Electronics -- derive 100 percent of their sales from interconnect products. Both of them also target the military/aerospace industry. Here are the top 10 sales leaders by ICs, passives/electromechanical devices, interconnects and computer products as well as sales growth.
Samsung Electro-mechanics licenses Peratech’s QTC sensor technology
North Yorks, England — Peratech Ltd. has signed a major licensing agreement for its Quantum Tunnelling Composite (QTC) technology, which will be included in a new portfolio of pressure sensing components from Samsung Electro-mechanics (EM).
The license is for the use of Peratech’s QTC switches in 5-way input devices, or Navikeys, made by Samsung Electro-mechanics that are used for menu navigation and interaction on mobile phones.
These devices are typically made using dome switches that allow current to flow when depressed giving a simple on/off operation, says Peratech. By replacing the dome switches with switches made from force sensitive QTC, the resulting input device is now pressure sensitive so that as more pressure is applied to the switch, more current flows, opening up new ways to interact with the phone, says the company.
“The pressure sensitivity of the QTC switches changes the game when it comes to human machine interface design enabling truly 3D user interfaces to be created in small, low power devices,” says Dr. Ho-Chul Joung, principal manager at Samsung EM, in a statement. “This three-dimensionality cannot be matched with existing resistive and capacitive technologies and means that the next generation of mobile phones will have many new and exciting features because of it.”
Peratech says QTC force sensitive switches can be made into any shape or size. QTC also delivers low power, has no moving parts and requires no air gap between the contacts.
NXP offers a low-power IC aimed at MPPT applications using PV cells or fuel cells. 
C&K Components offers a series of low-cost, miniature slide switches. The OS Series of RoHS-compliant switches feature a new high-temperature option for lead-free soldering.