Peratech’s QTC touch technology wins Queen’s Award for Innovation 2012 in the UK
Quantum Tunnelling Composites form an entire area of Material Science that has a wide range of applications from robotics to automotive and from touch screens to consumer electrical products.
The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is the UK’s most prestigious Award for business performance. The Innovation category is for continuous innovation and development, sustained over not less than five years to levels that are outstanding for the size of a company’s operations.
David Lussey, Peratech’s CTO and founder said: “It is amazing to think that an experiment to find a conductive adhesive went wrong and resulted in the creation of QTC, which is now the basis for a British company that has millions of pounds worth of sales around the world. We are all honored to receive this Award because innovation is the one, undisputed thing that the British really excel at so the competition is intense.”
Founded in 1996, Peratech is a privately held company based in Richmond, North Yorkshire with 20 employees. The company commercialized its QTC technology at the beginning of 2006 and is currently working with a number of key technology clients who are implementing QTC sensing technology within their own products. Its business is essentially the IP licensing model that has been proven to be rapidly scalable and highly profitable for the likes of ARM and many others. The company is profitable with 100% of sales being to overseas customers making it an excellent example of British innovation bringing in global revenue. Peratech is a rare example of a university spin-in with a close working relationship with the University of Durham who are researching into the properties of Quantum Tunnelling Composites.
QTC is a patented technology that uses metallic and non-metallic filler particles combined in an elastomeric binder. When pressure is applied, the electrical resistance drops in proportion to the amount of pressure, which allows sophisticated Human Machine Interface (HMI) designs to be created that react to variations in pressure. QTC technologies’ unique properties enable it to be made into force sensitive switches of any shape or size typically using screen printing so that they can be as thin as 75 microns. QTC is also low power and interfaces can be designed with no start resistance so that without pressure, the switch draws no power and passes no current. QTC is so sensitive so it can be used to detect even very small changes due to compression, tension or other stresses. It could even be used as a microphone as it is sensitive enough to be able to detect changes in air pressure caused by noise, speech or music.
One of Peratech’s recent innovation is the development of QTC Clear that was launched in 2011. The transparent version of QTC can be used to create touch screens that have all the benefits of the existing Resistive and Capacitive touch screen technologies but with none of their drawbacks. Plus, being force sensitive, they can sense not only x and y input but also z, i.e. input interaction is now three dimensional. This will enable a whole new generation of touchscreens to be created and a major, multi-million dollar license deal with a Japanese manufacture has already been signed.
Visit Peratech at www.peratech.com
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