TW202232292A - Touch pad with key input function - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a touch pad with key input function, which includes a printed circuit board, a plurality of miniature light-emitting diode units, and a light guide module. The printed circuit board has a first surface and a touch sensing layer, the touch sensing layer is formed on the first surface, and the touch sensing layer has a touch sensing range. The miniature light-emitting diode units are arranged on the first surface corresponding to the touch sensing range. The light guide module is disposed on the touch sensing layer and the miniature light-emitting diode units, and the light guide module includes a light guide plate having a plurality of grooves corresponding to the miniature light-emitting diode units for accommodating the miniature light-emitting diode units. Wherein, the touch sensing layer has a plurality of touch sensing units, and the touch sensing units constitute a plurality of touch sensing regions, and each touch sensing region forms a touch button representing a preset content.

Description

Touchpad with key input

The present invention relates to a touch panel with key input function, in particular, to a touch panel with miniature light emitting diodes.

Modern people often use notebook computers in their daily life. In addition to using an external mouse device to operate the notebook computer, users can also use a touchpad ( Touch Pad) to perform controls and operations such as cursor movement or click.

With the advancement of touch and backlight technology, the touchpads of many notebook computers are further equipped with built-in key input functions. Its design is to touch and press a specific position of the touchpad to light up the backlight module below and display multiple numbers or symbols, and at the same time, the touchpad will switch the area corresponding to the displayed numbers or symbols. The user can click on it to output corresponding numbers, symbols, or perform functions such as Backspace and Enter. In this way, the notebook computer can quickly provide input functions without the need for an external number key device.

See Figures 1A to 1C. 1A is a schematic diagram of a conventional touch panel 1 with a key input function; FIG. 1B is a schematic diagram of a plane layout of the touch panel 1 ; FIG. 1C is a schematic diagram of a side layout of the touch panel 1 . As shown in FIG. 1A , the key input function of the touch panel 1 includes a plurality of numbers or symbols, and each area divided by a dividing line represents a touch key 110 . Next, as shown in FIG. 1B and FIG. 1C , the touch panel 1 is provided with a side light source, that is, a plurality of light emitting diode (LED) units 13 are arranged on one side of the touch panel 1 , The light guide plate 12 is diffused to the entire plane area of the touch panel 1 to form a surface light source.

As mentioned above, the touch panel 1 is formed on a printed circuit board 10 with a plurality of touch sensing units 111 in an array form, and a plurality of light emitting diode units 13 are distributed on the printed circuit board 10 on the side. In addition, the light guide plate 12 has a plurality of notches 120 corresponding to the light emitting diode units 13 to provide assembly and placement with the light emitting diode units 13 . A mask layer 14 , a diffuser layer 15 and a light-transmitting sheet 16 are arranged in sequence above the light guide plate 12 , and a light-transmitting pattern corresponding to its number or symbol is formed on the mask layer 14 . The light of the symbol is transmitted out, and the diffusion layer 15 and the light-transmitting sheet 16 can respectively provide uniformity of the transmitted light and contact with the user's finger.

However, it is well known that disposing the light emitting diode unit 13 on the touch sensing unit 111 will affect the effect of the touch sensing. In the case of capacitive touch technology, the touch sensing units 111 are respectively composed of sensing circuits and driving circuits with specific patterns. The capacitance value here changes, so that the sensitivity of the touch sensing unit 111 at the corresponding position is poor, so that the touch of the finger cannot be sensed normally. Referring to FIG. 1B , the touch sensing unit 111 located at an upper edge portion A of the touch panel 1 will become a touch failure area.

In addition, since the light-emitting diode units 13 use white light as the main side projection, when the touch panel 1 is turned on, it exhibits a full range of monochromatic light, and when it is turned off, it changes together. dark. It can be seen that such a light source cannot be used for various display changing applications. Alternatively, under a specific driving control design, the touch panel 1 can be made to emit light on the touch keys 110 in certain rows, while the touch keys 110 in certain rows do not emit light, for example, the number key 7 , 4, 1, and half of the number keys 0 appear to be illuminated, while others are rendered non-illuminated, but such a design will increase the complexity of the circuit and have a relatively high manufacturing cost.

Therefore, how to improve the design of the conventional touch panel to provide more effective touch sensing and more diverse display effects is the main purpose of the development of this application.

The purpose of the present invention is to provide a touch panel with a key input function. The touch panel adopts miniature light-emitting diodes as the light source, so it can effectively reduce the thickness of the whole device, and can achieve various display change applications and reduce the problem of induction failure and other technical improvements.

The present invention is a touch panel with key input function, comprising: a printed circuit board, a plurality of miniature light emitting diode units and a light guide module. The printed circuit board has a first surface and a touch sensing layer, the touch sensing layer is formed on the first surface, and the touch sensing layer has a touch sensing range. The micro LED units are disposed on the first surface corresponding to the touch sensing range. The light guide module is disposed on the touch sensing layer and the miniature light emitting diode units, and the light guide module includes a light guide plate, the light guide plate has a plurality of corresponding to the miniature light emitting diode units grooves for accommodating the miniature light-emitting diode units. The touch sensing layer has a plurality of touch sensing units, the touch sensing units form a plurality of touch sensing areas, and each touch sensing area forms a touch button representing a preset content.

In order to have a better understanding of the above and other aspects of the present invention, the following embodiments are given and described in detail with the accompanying drawings.

The following examples are provided for detailed description, and the examples are only used as examples to illustrate, and do not limit the scope of protection of the present invention. In addition, the drawings in the embodiments omit unnecessary elements or elements that can be completed with ordinary techniques, so as to clearly show the technical characteristics of the present invention.

The implementation of the touch panel with the key input function proposed by the present invention will now be described with an embodiment. Please refer to FIG. 2 to FIG. 3B at the same time, wherein FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a side configuration of a touch panel 2 of the present invention; FIG. 3A is a schematic diagram of a plane configuration of some components of the touch panel 2 ; FIG. 3B is a partial enlarged view of FIG. 3A Schematic.

As shown in FIG. 2, the touch panel 2 of the present invention mainly includes a printed circuit board 20, a plurality of miniature light emitting diode units 23 and a light guide module 2a, wherein the printed circuit board 20 has a first surface 201 and a touch sensing layer 21 formed on the first surface 201 . Next, the micro LED units 23 are disposed on the first surface 201 , and the light guide module 2 a is disposed on the touch sensing layer 21 and the micro LED units 23 .

In this embodiment, the light guide module 2 a includes a light guide plate 22 , a mask layer 24 and a diffusion layer 25 . From bottom to top, the light guide plate 22 is disposed on the touch sensing layer 21 corresponding to each micro light emitting diode unit 23 , the mask layer 24 is disposed on the light guide plate 22 , and the diffusion layer 25 is disposed on the mask layer 24 . The light guide plate 22 can diffuse the light of the point light source into a surface light source, and the mask layer 24 is formed with light-transmitting patterns (ie numbers or symbols) with various preset contents, and the diffusion layer 25 can be used to transmit light. Do further homogenization. The function of the light guide module 2a is similar to that of the prior art, so it is not repeated here.

One of the features of the present invention is that the light source adopts a miniaturized light emitting diode (Mini LED or Micro LED), and its size is smaller than a traditional light emitting diode (LED) by several orders of magnitude. As far as current technology is concerned, each conventional light-emitting diode (LED) can be up to about 5 millimeters (mm) in length or width; and miniature light-emitting diodes (Mini LEDs) can also be called sub-millimeter light-emitting diodes. The polar body, that is, the size can be as small as about 100 micrometers (μm) (ie, 0.1 millimeter (mm)), so the micro LED unit 23 of the present invention is significantly smaller in size.

In addition, the micro LED units 23 can adopt a color display design, that is, one unit has a module of three primary colors of RGB, so that the micro LED units 23 can not only operate the backlight function, but also operate the full color. Display function, and can display the same or different colors according to requirements.

Under the condition of the small size of the micro LED units 23, as shown in FIG. 2, the light guide plate 22 has a plurality of grooves 220 corresponding to the micro LED units 23 for accommodating the micro LED units 23. some miniature light-emitting diode units 23 . Further, in order to reduce the influence on the touch sensing, the shape, size or the formed position and number of the grooves 220 are all corresponding to the conditions of the micro LED units 23, so that the Some miniature light-emitting diode units 23 can be assembled and placed in the corresponding grooves 220, and the light guide plate 22 can be made of materials with appropriate thickness.

Therefore, another feature of the present invention is that due to the small size of the miniature light-emitting diode units 23, the size of the grooves 220 to be accommodated is not large, thereby avoiding the need to form the entire through-hole in the prior art. There is enough space and size to accommodate the conventional light-emitting diode unit. On the other hand, the thickness of the light guide plate 22 and the overall thickness of the light guide module 2a of the present invention can be reduced more than that of the prior art, thereby reducing the possible interference problem of light in the laminated structure.

FIG. 2 also shows that the touch panel 2 of the present invention further includes a light-transmitting sheet 26 disposed on the diffusion layer 25 of the light guide module 2a to provide contact with the user's fingers and protect the bottom Structure. The light-transmitting sheet 26 can be, for example, glass. It can be understood that the arrangement of the light guide module 2a and the light-transmitting sheet 26 of the present invention is not limited to this embodiment, and other further changes can be made. For example, in other embodiments, the light-transmitting sheet can be integrated into the light guide module, or the diffusing layer can be omitted according to requirements, or the mask layer and the diffusing layer can be integrated into the same element, etc. Example with the same or similar effect.

In addition, as shown in FIG. 3A , the touch sensing layer 21 has a touch sensing area 21a, and the micro LED units 23 are disposed on the first surface 201 corresponding to the touch sensing area 21a. Specifically, the touch-sensing layer 21 has a plurality of touch-sensing units 211 , and these touch-sensing units 211 are in the form of arrays, and the touch-sensing range 21 a is formed by the touch-sensing units 211 . The formed range can sense the touch of the user's finger.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIG. 3A , the arrangement of the micro LED units 23 is designed to be uniformly distributed in the touch sensing area 21 a, that is, approximately two are adjacent to each other. The miniature light-emitting diode units 23 have the same spacing to achieve the effect of a uniform surface light source. It can be understood that the arrangement of the miniature light-emitting diode unit 23 of the present invention is not limited to this embodiment, and other further changes can be made; Polar body unit.

From this, it can be seen that another feature of the present invention is that each miniature light-emitting diode unit 23 under the characteristic of small size can be arranged separately or can be arranged at a required or designated position, and is not limited to the conventional one. The LED unit can only be placed on the design limit edge of the side of the touch panel close to the printed circuit board.

Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 3B , each touch sensing unit 211 includes a sensing circuit 211a and a driving circuit 211b, and the sensing circuit 211a and the driving circuit 211b are arranged in an intersecting manner. In detail, the entire touch sensing layer 21 is formed by a plurality of driving lines (Tx) and a plurality of sensing lines (Rx) crossing each other on different planes from the horizontal direction and the vertical direction. Each driving line has a driving line pattern, each sensing line has a sensing line pattern, and each touch sensing unit 211 is a portion where the driving line pattern and the sensing line pattern intersect. The design of the driving line pattern and the sensing line pattern is a conventional technology, and there are various pattern designs depending on the application, so the details are not described here.

Based on the above, in this embodiment, the micro LED units 23 are further arranged in the driving circuits 211b and 211b of any two touch sensing units 211 and 211 ′ shown in FIG. 3B , for example. 'between. Specifically, the touch sensing unit 211 utilizes the change of the capacitance value between the distributed sensing circuit 211a and the driving circuit 211b to provide the judgment of whether the touch sensing unit 211 is touched or not. Therefore, under the condition of small size, the micro light-emitting diode units 23 can be arranged in the gaps of these circuits, or arranged in places where these circuits are not used.

Therefore, as shown in FIG. 3B , at the installation position of the micro LED unit 23 , the two driving circuits 211 b and 211 b ′ have corresponding vacancies for the micro LED unit 23 to be installed in the micro LED unit 23 . on the first surface 201 . It can be understood that the sensing circuits 211a, 211a', and the driving circuits 211b, 211b' in FIG. 3B are only schematic representations, and the specific pattern content thereof can be further designed. In other words, in the present invention, the miniature light-emitting diode unit 23 can also be arranged in the gap of the density distribution of each driving circuit itself after the changed design, or can be arranged between the sensing circuits of any two touch sensing units .

Due to the small size of the micro LED units 23 , most or all of the structures of each micro LED unit 23 will not overlap or obscure related circuits. Still further, the arrangement of the two connection points of each miniature light-emitting diode unit 23 on the first surface 201 of the present invention does not cross the adjacent sensing circuit 211a, that is, between the two connection points. The space will not be traversed by the sensing circuit 211a, so that the touch sensing can be minimally affected, and there is no need to hollow out the relevant sensing circuit for welding the light source.

Therefore, another feature of the present invention is that, under the characteristics of small size, the arrangement and distribution of each micro LED unit 23 can greatly reduce the damage to the touch sensing unit 211, and avoid the conventional LED light emitting diode. The problem of sensing failure caused when the pole body unit is arranged on the touch sensing unit. Furthermore, even if the applied sensing line patterns are designed more densely, the micro LED units 23 will not or can cause little overlap or shading thereof, so that subsequent applications such as sensing compensation or sensing adjustment need to be performed. is not too great.

FIG. 2 also shows that the touch panel 2 of the present invention further includes a controller 27, and the printed circuit board 20 has a second surface 202 and a plurality of through holes 200 formed inside, the controller 27 is provided on the second surface 202 . The controller 27 is used as a main unit for controlling whether each micro LED unit 23 emits light or not, or as a main unit for receiving the sensing results of each touch sensing unit 211 . Since the space of the first surface 201 is mainly used for circuit design, the controller 27 is disposed on the second surface 202 opposite to the first surface 201 , and the miniature light-emitting diodes The unit 23 and the touch sensing units 211 can be electrically connected to the controller 27 through the extending wires and the through holes 200 .

Please refer to FIG. 4 , which is a schematic diagram of the touch panel 2 performing a touch application. As shown in FIG. 3A and FIG. 4 , the touch sensing units 211 form a plurality of touch sensing areas 210 , that is, the touch sensing units 211 in the form of an array are further divided into several areas according to their positions and ranges to form a plurality of touch sensing areas 210 . The touch sensing areas 210 . Each touch sensing area 210 forms a touch key representing a predetermined content to provide user touch input. Similar to FIG. 1A of the prior art, the preset content is the aforementioned numbers, symbols, or functions such as Backspace and Enter.

In this embodiment, the touch sensing units 211 corresponding to each touch sensing area 210 are plural, or there may be one touch sensing unit 211 corresponding to more than two touch sensing areas 210, and each touch sensing unit 211 may correspond to more than two touch sensing areas 210. At least one micro LED unit 23 corresponding to the sensing area 210 can be designed, and the design may be determined by the number of touch keys required and the size of the partition. It can be understood that the micro LED unit 23 and the touch sensing unit 211 corresponding to each touch sensing area 210 are adjacent to each other in position, and this design can be planned by the programmer in advance, and the The associated position information is recorded in memory accessible to the controller 27 along with the assigned results.

Therefore, another feature of the present invention is that in addition to the miniature light-emitting diode units 23 with small size characteristics that can be arranged separately, the controller 27 can also be used for each micro-LED by independent circuits. The unit 23 controls whether or not to emit light. For example, the controller 27 can cause the micro LED units 23 corresponding to the touched touch sensing units 211 to emit light or not to emit light according to the touched situations of the touch sensing units 211 . Alternatively, the controller 27 can make the micro LED units 23 corresponding to the touch sensing areas 210 emit light in the same or different colors, respectively.

As shown in FIG. 4 , such a touch application may firstly cause all the micro LED units 23 to emit light when the touch panel 2 is activated with a key input function. However, when the user starts to click one of the touch-sensitive areas 210 (ie, touch buttons), such as the number key 5 in FIG. The corresponding miniature light-emitting diode unit 23 of the button) does not emit light, or may even show other colors that are different from the light-emitting colors of other touch sensing regions 210, so as to clearly indicate to the user that the corresponding touch button has been successfully is clicked, and the corresponding preset content has also been entered at the same time.

It can be seen from this that the touch panel 2 of the present invention can present a variety of display change applications when performing the key input function, which can not only increase the visual viewing effect, but also provide a human-computer interaction sense of operation, and make the user feel comfortable. The touch result is immediately fed back to the user. Of course, the application of the display change of the present invention is not limited to the above examples, and other designs can be made according to requirements. For example, when the key input function is activated, each touch sensing area 210 (ie, touch keys) can be designed to show different colors; or, each touch sensing area 210 (ie, touch keys) can be designed Changing colors over time.

Although the present invention adopts the miniature light-emitting diode unit 23 to minimize the impact on the touch sensing, it is still possible that a small part of the circuit is shielded, and this is the way to pass the firmware or execute the application program. Compensate or adjust touch parameters to improve. For example, the controller 27 can be designed to continuously scan all the touch sensing units 211 , and adjust the capacitance value of the touch sensing unit 211 to be calibrated according to a capacitance value threshold.

In detail, regardless of whether there is no touch or a touch state, the setting of the micro LED unit 23 may cause the capacitance value of the corresponding touch sensing unit 211 there to decrease, which is not affected by the micro LED unit. The sensing result of the touch sensing unit 211 affected by 23 can be defined as the capacitance threshold. Therefore, after the controller 27 corrects the sensing result of the touch sensing unit 211 having the sensing failure problem toward the capacitance value threshold, an effective improvement can be obtained.

To sum up, compared with the prior art, the touch panel with key input function proposed by the present invention can achieve the following technical improvements: First, the present invention adopts miniature light emitting diodes, so that the light guide plate is assembled in the assembled It is not necessary to form the entire penetrating notch at the position of the micro light emitting diode, which not only reduces the interference problem of light, but also effectively reduces the thickness of the whole device; secondly, the present invention can set the micro light emitting diode unit at any position within the touch sensing range It can be independently controlled whether it emits light or not or the display color, so as to achieve a variety of display changes and applications; thirdly, the miniature light-emitting diode unit of the present invention will not cause significant damage to the induction circuit, Thereby, the problem of induction failure can be reduced, and even if compensation or adjustment is required, the extent is far less than that in the case of conventional light-emitting diode units.

Therefore, the present invention can effectively solve the related problems raised in the prior art, and can successfully achieve the main purpose of the development of this case.

Although the present invention has been disclosed above with the embodiments, it is not intended to limit the present invention. Those skilled in the art to which the present invention pertains can make various changes and modifications without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. Therefore, the protection scope of the present invention shall be determined by the scope of the appended patent application.

1: Trackpad 10: Printed Circuit Board 110: Touch keys 111: Touch sensing unit 12: Light guide plate 120: Notch 13: Light-emitting diode unit 14: Mask layer 15: Diffusion layer 16: Translucent sheet A: The upper edge part 2: Trackpad 2a: Light guide module 20: Printed Circuit Board 200: perforated 201: First Surface 202: Second Surface 21: Touch sensing layer 21a: Touch sensing range 210: Touch Sensing Area 211, 211': touch sensing unit 211a, 211a': induction circuit 211b, 211b': drive circuit 22: light guide plate 220: Groove 23: Miniature Light Emitting Diode Unit 24: Mask Layer 25: Diffusion layer 26: Translucent sheet 27: Controller

1A is a schematic diagram of a conventional touch panel 1 with a key input function. [ FIG. 1B ] is a schematic diagram of a plane arrangement of a conventional touch panel 1 . [ FIG. 1C ] is a schematic diagram of a side configuration of a conventional touch panel 1 . [ FIG. 2 ] is a schematic diagram of the side setting of the touch panel 2 of the present invention. [ Fig. 3A ] is a schematic diagram of the plane arrangement of some components of the touch panel 2 of the present invention. [ FIG. 3B ] is a partially enlarged schematic view of FIG. 3A . [ FIG. 4 ] is a schematic diagram of the touch control application of the touch panel 2 of the present invention

2: Trackpad

21: Touch sensing layer

21a: Touch sensing range

211: Touch sensing unit

22: light guide plate

220: Groove

23: Miniature Light Emitting Diode Unit

Claims (10)

A touchpad with key input function, comprising: a printed circuit board having a first surface and a touch sensing layer, the touch sensing layer is formed on the first surface, and the touch sensing layer has a touch sensing range; a plurality of miniature light emitting diode units disposed on the first surface corresponding to the touch sensing range; and A light guide module is disposed on the touch sensing layer and the miniature light emitting diode units, and the light guide module includes a light guide plate, the light guide plate has a plurality of corresponding to the miniature light emitting diodes a groove of the unit for accommodating the miniature light emitting diode units; The touch sensing layer has a plurality of touch sensing units, the touch sensing units form a plurality of touch sensing areas, and each touch sensing area forms a touch button representing a preset content. As claimed in claim 1, the touch panel with key input function, wherein the light guide module further includes: a mask layer, disposed on the light guide plate, on which is formed a light transmission pattern corresponding to each preset content; and A diffusion layer is disposed on the mask layer for uniform transmission of light. As claimed in claim 1, the touch panel with a key input function further includes a light-transmitting sheet, which is disposed on the light-guiding module to provide contact with the user's fingers. The touch panel with key input function according to claim 1, wherein each touch sensing unit includes a sensing circuit and a driving circuit, and the sensing circuit and the driving circuit are arranged in an intersecting manner. The touch panel with key input function of claim 4, wherein the miniature light emitting diode units are disposed between the driving circuits or the sensing circuits of any two touch sensing units. The touch panel with key input function of claim 1, wherein the micro LED units are distributed uniformly or non-uniformly in the touch sensing range. As claimed in claim 1, the touch panel with key input function further includes a controller, and the printed circuit board has a second surface and a plurality of through holes, the controller is disposed on the second surface, and the micro-light emitting The diode unit and the touch sensing units are electrically connected to the controller through the through holes. The touch panel with key input function of claim 7, wherein the controller is to make the micro light emitting diode units corresponding to the touched touch sensing units due to the touching conditions of the touch sensing units Glow or not glow. The touch panel with key input function of claim 7, wherein the controller makes the micro LED units corresponding to the touch sensing regions emit light in the same or different colors respectively. The touch panel with key input function of claim 7, wherein the controller is used to scan the touch sensing units, and adjust the capacitance values of the corresponding touch sensing units according to a capacitance value threshold.

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