News Release
Peratech wins Design Team of the Year at 2015 Elektra Awards
Richmond, Yorkshire – 2 December 2015. Peratech won the Design Team of the Year at this year’s
prestigious Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards ceremony for its mass-production ready, 3D
Force Touch solutions using Quantum Tunnelling Composites.
The judges commented that Peratech has designed a processing technique for mass production of QTC®,
or Quantum Tunnelling Composite® materials, which can be used in screen-print production with durability
of millions of activations. The judges were particularly impressed by Peratech’s in-house design expertise,
which includes mechanical, embedded electronics and firmware development.
Late last year, Peratech stopped its business model of licensing QTC technology and started selling
custom force-sensing solutions. Commented CEO Jon Stark, “Peratech’s licensing model forced early
adopters to solve the new force-touch sensing technology integration challenges themselves — it was
simply too much for them. When our new management team arrived in July of 2014, we immediately saw
that, if we were going to successfully commercialize QTC, we needed to have skin in the game. In
response to customer need, we created a Design Team with expertise in mechanical integration,
electronics system design, embedded electronics, algorithm and firmware development, as well as
expertise in user experience and embedded software development.”
With the core engineering capabilities in-house, plus a development platform that it uses to rapidly develop
and deploy solutions, Peratech’s Team has been awarded several design wins for 3D force-touch user
experiences.
Peratech’s in-house capabilities for solutions engineering alone didn’t translate directly to all innovators.
Yes, an electronics company with R&D dollars to spend saw development prices drop by a factor of 10, and
concept prototype delivery-times go from 3 months to 3 weeks, but for the grassroots innovators and
makers, the technology was still out of reach.
Peratech is responding to the ubiquitous demand for force sensing by creating a touch demonstration and
development environment that gives DIY integration engineers the ability to create new products without
requiring them to have expertise in mechanics, electronics, and software engineering. Peratech expects to
launch this product offering to the public through web sales in the beginning of 2016.
Because QTC sensors offer light touch sensing in a variety of operating conditions and temperature ranges
that competitive technologies cannot, companies from all industries are looking to Peratech’s sensors to
augment existing capacitive touch interfaces without having to upgrade existing touch microcontrollers.
The most obvious applications are adding force-sensing to an existing touch display as well as adding force
plus location to the bezel or edge of a touch display.
However, the real innovations using QTC sensors will be seen in smart surfaces and objects, as QTC
sensors can placed not only behind glass, but also behind metals, plastics, leather and wood laminates as
they are sensitive enough to detect touch through thin layers of these materials. This makes possible new,
smart, pressure-based HMI surfaces for the automotive, industrial, smart home and appliance industries.
Said Stark, “Not only have we had a very strong customer response for these types of tools, we’ve had a
strong response from microcontroller companies that have invited us to piggyback off of their demo
platforms. This translates to more engineers wanting to, and knowing how to, implement QTC forcesensing solutions than we could have imagined even months ago.”
Concluded Stark, “It all comes down to Peratech’s scientists, engineers and support team that continue to
make it easier, faster and cheaper to convert force-sensing ideas from concept to mass-production.
Congratulations team, for a well-deserved win.”
Quantum Tunnelling Composites® for force touch 3D sensing
QTC® sensors are opening up a new world of possibilities with innovative, pressure-based user
experiences. QTC® materials change from being an almost perfect insulator to becoming increasingly
conductive in proportion to the amount of force applied. The materials are very resilient with predictable
deformation and recovery so that changes in resistance due to even the slightest amount of pressure on
the QTC material is both predictable and repeatable over more than a million cycles. New force-sensing
formulations from Peratech include a transparent version of QTC. These force-sensing formulations
provide the highest dynamic range of multi-touch pressure-sensing in a thin over-display to create more
natural, smarter, safer interactions between a product and user.
Elektra Awards
The Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards are the largest technology and business awards in the
European electronics industry. In their 13th year, the awards are given to individuals and businesses in
order to appreciate their achievements in areas such as sales growth, innovation or employee motivation.
In total, 23 awards were given during the Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards 2015.
Peratech
Peratech Holdco Ltd. is a privately held company based in Richmond, North Yorkshire. It is currently working with a
number of key technology clients to provide them with force sensing solutions. The company is an excellent example
of British innovation bringing in global revenue. QTC ® force sensing technology is protected by numerous worldwide
patents and has a wide range of applications. From robotics to automotive and from touch screens to consumer
electrical products, the product has been integrated into over a million products with companies around the world.
For further information, please contact
Peratech, Old Repeater Station, Brompton-on-Swale, North Yorkshire, DL10 7JH United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0) 1748
813670 Fax: +44 (0) 1748 813679 Email: info@peratech.com www.peratech.com
Nigel Robson, Vortex PR, Island House, Forest Road, Forest, Guernsey, GY8 0AB United Kingdom. Tel: +44 (0)
1481 233080 Email: nigel@vortexpr.com
Quantum Tunnelling Composite and QTC are registered trademarks of Peratech Holdco Ltd.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Neil Jarvie, Peratech's VP of Global Sales, collecting the Award from the host, Robin Ince on the left, Frank
Mackel, MD of Rohde & Schwarz UK on the right with Richard Wilson, Editor of Electronics Weekly, on the
far right