Microchip Technology expanded its turnkey capacitive touch lineup with the MTCH3380P and MTCH3240P touch controllers. These are the first in the family to support simultaneous key, slider, and wheel sensing, targeting the fast-growing display-free human-machine interfaces (HMIs) in home appliances, outdoor equipment, and industrial applications.
Appliance and equipment makers increasingly replace traditional displays with backlit capacitive touch keys, sliders, and wheels to cut system cost and improve aesthetics. But such designs often need many touch sensors, and conventional controllers struggle with longer scan times and lower signal-to-noise ratio as sensor counts rise. The MTCH3380P and MTCH3240P address this with 12 parallel ADCs, sampling multiple sensors at once to maintain response speed and signal quality.
On specs, the MTCH3380P supports up to 38 sensors in self-capacitance mode and 64 in mutual-capacitance mode; the MTCH3240P supports 24 and 32 respectively. Both meet IEC/UL 60730 Class B functional safety requirements, operate up to 105°C, and suit ovens, stoves, refrigerators, and washing machines—environments with moisture where users may wear gloves. Enhanced touch sensitivity and noise immunity enable reliable detection through thick cover materials or gloves, valuable for outdoor gear like EV charging piles, parking meters, and self-service terminals.
Giovanni Fontana, senior director of Microchip's HMI business unit, said manufacturers face a core conflict: cutting system cost while adding more touch functions, with response speed and reliability getting harder as sensor counts grow—exactly what these controllers target.
For development, Microchip offers the mTouch Studio environment and evaluation hardware, plus Linux and Zephyr host drivers, letting manufacturers complete IEC 60730 Class B certification themselves. For appliance and industrial makers planning next-gen touch panels, the appeal is covering multiple touch forms with a single controller while paving the functional safety certification path upfront.
ICgoodFind Summary: Microchip uses a parallel ADC architecture to break the multi-sensor touch acquisition bottleneck, packaging display-free HMI reliability and functional safety certification into a turnkey solution. Appliance and industrial touch chip selection is shifting from "good enough" to "certification-ready."
