Impact of bending on flexible metal oxide TFTs and oscillator circuits

Thin‐film circuits on plastic capable of high‐frequency signal generation have important applications in large‐area, flexible hybrid systems, enabling efficient wireless transmission of power and information. We explore oscillator circuits using zinc‐oxide thin‐film transistors (ZnO TFTs) deposited by the conformal, layer‐by‐layer growth technique of plasma‐enhanced atomic layer deposition. TFTs on three substrates—glass, 50‐µm‐thick freestanding polyimide, and 3.5‐µm‐thick spin‐cast polyimide—are evaluated to identify the best candidate for high‐frequency flexible oscillators. We find that TFTs on ultrathin plastic can endure bending to smaller radii than TFTs on commercial 50‐µm‐thick freestanding polyimide, and their superior dimensional stability furthermore allows for smaller gate resistances and device capacitances. Oscillators on ultrathin plastic with minimized parasitics achieve oscillation frequencies as high as 17 MHz, well above the cutoff frequency f_T. Lastly, we observe a bending radius dependence of oscillation frequency for flexible TFT oscillators and examine how mitigating device parasitics benefits the oscillator frequency versus power consumption tradeoff.     

Simple pixel circuits for high resolution and high image quality organic light emitting diode‐on‐silicon microdisplays with wide data voltage range

Two simple pixel circuits are proposed for high resolution and high image quality organic light‐emitting diode‐on‐silicon microdisplays. The proposed pixel circuits achieve high resolution due to simple pixel structure comprising three n‐type MOSFETs and one storage capacitor, which are integrated into a unit subpixel area of 3 × 9 µm² using a 90 nm CMOS process. The proposed pixel circuits improve image quality by compensating for the threshold voltage variation of the driving transistors and extending the data voltage range. To verify the performance of the proposed pixel circuits, the emission currents of 24 pixel circuits are measured. The measured emission current deviation error of the proposed pixel circuits A and B ranges from ?2.59% to +2.78%, and from ?1.86% to +1.84%, respectively, which are improved from the emission current deviation error of the conventional current‐source type pixel circuit when the threshold voltage variation is not compensated for, which ranges from ?14.87% to +14.67%. In addition, the data voltage ranges of the proposed pixel circuits A and B are 1.193 V and 1.792 V, respectively, which are 2.38 and 3.57 times wider than the data voltage range of the conventional current‐source type pixel circuit of 0.501 V.     

A pair of parallel differential magnetic‐field probes with high measurement accuracy and high electric‐field suppression ratio

Magnetic‐field probes can be used for electromagnetic interference measurement of high‐speed circuits. The main magnetic probe performance includes sensitivity, spatial resolution, electric‐field suppression ratio (EFSR), and measurement accuracy. In this article, a pair of differential magnetic‐field probes is proposed to improve measurement accuracy without reducing sensitivity. The proposed differential probes consist of two asymmetric loop probes, which are designed in the same plane and separated by a row of periodic vias. The proposed differential probes are fabricated under PCB process. High accuracy can be achieved by measuring difference between outputs of the two probes. In addition, EFSR can be improved by size optimization of the differential magnetic‐field probes. Simulation and measurement results show the operating bandwidth is from 100 MHz to 12 GHz, the measurement error is 3.4% and the EFSR is about 40 dB. The proposed probes have higher measurement accuracy and higher EFSR than the conventional single probe, and larger operation bandwidth than the stacked differential probes.     

Design and simulation of a thermally actuated MEMS switch for microwave circuits

The design, modeling, and optimization of a novel, thermally actuated CMOS‐MEMS switch are presented in this article. This series capacitive MEMS switch solves the substrate loss and down‐state capacitance degradation problems commonly plaguing MEMS switches. The switch uses finger structure for capacitive coupling. The vertical bending characteristic of bimorph cantilever beams under different temperatures is utilized to turn the switch on and off. A set of electrical, mechanical, and thermal models is established, and cross‐domain electro‐thermo‐mechanical simulations are performed to optimize the design parameters of the switch. The fabrication of the switch is completely CMOS‐process compatible. The design is fabricated using the AMI 0.6 μm CMOS process and a maskless reactive‐ion etching process. The measured results show the insertion loss and isolation are 1.67 and 33 dB, respectively, at 5.4 GHz, and 0.36 and 23 dB at 10 GHz. The actuation voltage is 25 V and the power consumption is 480 mW. This switch has a vast number of applications in the RF/microwave field, such as configurable voltage control oscillators, filters, and configurable matching networks. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.     

一种单片集成电容式压力传感器的设计、制造和测试

提出了一种新型电容式压力传感器.在外加压力下,该传感器的极板面积、间距以及介质层介电常数均发生改变,并导致电容发生变化.同时介绍了接口电路的设计,该电路基于电容-频率转换原理.该传感器结构简单,实现了与CMOS接口电路集成.传感器采用标准CMOS工艺与后处理工艺相结合的方式制造.结果表明,在800 hPa到1 100 hPa的压力范围,传感器灵敏度约为44 fF/hPa,接口电路的分辨率为3.77 Hz/hPa.     

2.56 Gbps对称密码芯片的设计与实现

根据国家信息安全领域确定的密码标准体系自行设计的对称密码算法，提出了一种高速对称密码芯片结构。芯片中加解密核心部件用流水线实现，密钥生成采用电路复用技术，兼顾了芯片的速度和面积。并提出了一种改进的二元决策电路，以实现字节替换函数，有效地减小了关键路径的时延。芯片采用中芯国际0.18μm CMOS工艺标准单元库流片成功，支持3种密钥长度和4种工作模式，可以稳定工作在80MHz，吞吐量达到2.56Gbps。     

Digital‐to‐analog converter with gamma correction on glass substrate for TFT‐panel applications

Abstract— Low‐temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology has a tendency towards integrating all circuits on glass substrate. However, the poly‐Si TFTs suffered poor uniformity with large variations in the device characteristics due to a narrow laser process window for producing large‐grained poly‐Si TFTs. The device variation is a serious problem for circuit realization on the LCD panel, so how to design reliable on‐panel circuits is a challenge for system‐on‐panel (SOP) applications. In this work, a 6‐bit R‐string digital‐to‐analog converter (DAC) with gamma correction on glass substrate for TFT‐panel applications is proposed. The proposed circuit, which is composed of a folded R‐string circuit, a segmented digital decoder, and reordering of the decoding circuit, has been designed and fabricated in a 3‐μm LTPS technology. The area of the new proposed DAC circuit is effectively reduced to about one‐sixth compared to that of the conventional circuit for the same LTPS process.     

A Flexible electronic‐paper display with an ultra‐thin and flexible LSI driver using quick‐response liquid‐powder technology

Abstract— A thin and flexible LSI driver with a thickness of less than 35 μm for a passive‐matrix‐driven Quick‐Response Liquid‐Powder Display (QR‐LPD?) was successfully mounted onto the flexible printed circuit (FPC) and the back substrates of a flexible QR‐LPD?. Amounted LSI driver on a plastic substrate shows no significant degradation in the driving performances and maintains physical flexibility without any connection failures. This technology can realize a fully flexible electronic paper in combination with a plastic‐substrate QR‐LPD? fabricated by a roll‐to‐roll process.     

A novel six‐port circuit based on four quadrature hybrids

A novel six‐port circuit is proposed and demonstrated. The circuit is based on four quadrature hybrids. A prototype circuit is fabricated and characterized with microstrip lines. Reflection coefficients for a few loads are measured with the fabricated circuit to evaluate its performance. The results agree with those from an HP8510C network analyzer reasonably well. Using active inductors and varactors, the six‐port circuit is also designed with a 0.13 μm CMOS process. The simulation results show that the operating frequency is tunable from 1 to 6.8 GHz. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2010.     

A flexible 2.1‐in. active‐matrix electrophoretic display with high resolution and a thickness of 100 μm

Abstract— A paper‐thin QVGA, flexible 2.1‐in. active‐matrix electrophoretic display (AMEPD) that features 100‐μm thick and a 192‐ppi resolution has been developed. An LTPS‐TFT backplane with integrated peripheral driver circuits was first fabricated on a glass substrate and then transferred to a very thin (30‐μm) plastic film by employing surface‐free technology by laser ablation/annealing (SUFTLA®). A micro‐encapsulated electrophoretic imaging sheet was laminated on the backplane. A supporting substrate was used to support the LTPS‐TFT backplane. Fine images were successfully displayed on the rollable AM‐EPD. The integrated driver circuits dramatically reduce the number of external connection terminals, thus easily boosting the reliability of electrical connections even on such a thin plastic film.     

Technologies toward flexible liquid‐crystal displays

Abstract— Several leading technologies for flexible liquid‐crystal displays have been developed recently at ERSO. The roll‐to‐roll compatible techniques, polymer‐added liquid crystal, have been applied on a film‐like substrate. A flexible black‐and‐white cholesteric liquid‐crystal display was also implemented by photo‐induced phase separation. Color filters placed on a plastic substrate by a low‐temperature manufacturing process was successfully fabricated. A novel design of a wide‐viewing‐angle color plastic LCD was also proposed.     

A post-CMOS micromachined lateral accelerometer

In a post-complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) micromachining technology, the process flow enables the integration of micromechanical structures with conventional CMOS circuits which are low-cost and readily available. This paper presents a lateral capacitive sensing accelerometer fabricated in the post-CMOS process. Design advantages include electrically isolated multimetal routing on microstructures to create full-bridge capacitive sensors, and integration to increase transducer sensitivity by minimizing parasitic capacitance. In a size of 350 μm by 500 μm, this accelerometer has a 1 mG/√(Hz) resolution and a linear range of at least ±13 G. The fundamental limitations of mechanical and electronic noise for acceleration sensing are addressed     

Design of a novel static-triggered power-rail ESD clamp circuit in a 65-nm CMOS process基于65纳米CMOS工艺的静态触发型电源钳位ESD保护电路设计

This work presents the design of a novel static-triggered power-rail electrostatic discharge (ESD) clamp circuit. The superior transient-noise immunity of the static ESD detection mechanism over the transient one is firstly discussed. Based on the discussion, a novel power-rail ESD clamp circuit utilizing the static ESD detection mechanism is proposed. By skillfully incorporating a thyristor delay stage into the trigger circuit (TC), the proposed circuit achieves the best ESD-conduction behavior while consuming the lowest leakage current (I_leak) at the normal bias voltage among all investigated circuits in this work. In addition, the proposed circuit achieves an excellent false-triggering immunity against fast power-up pulses. All investigated circuits are fabricated in a 65-nm CMOS process. Performance superiorities of the proposed circuit are fully verified by both simulation and test results. Moreover, the proposed circuit offers an efficient on-chip ESD protection scheme considering the worst discharge case in the utilized process.     

18位高精度音频Σ-ΔDAC设计

采用基于过采样Σ-ΔDAC调制技术设计的音频D/A转换器,对量化噪声进行有效整形,提高了分辨率和带内信噪比(SNR)。重点对Sigma-delta设计进行了详细分析,给出了有关电路结构和仿真结果。芯片已在TSMC 0.18μm CMOS工艺上流片成功,在工作频率6.144MHz时动态范围达128.6dB,信噪比109.5dB,总谐波失真达-117.2dB。     

A VLSI chip implementation of an A/D converter error table compensator

Error table compensation can be used to improve the spurious free dynamic range performance of high speed A/D converters. This paper gives details of an error table compensator system that uses a VLSI chip incorporating a transversal filter programmed as a wideband differentiator, additional on-chip circuits including delays and an adder, and a lookup table that is stored in external memory. The cascadable 10GOPS transversal filter differentiator chip has been designed and fabricated and can operate in 32-tap symmetric, 32-tap anti-symmetric or 16-tap non-symmetric modes. It has programmable tap weights and uses 16-bit signed arithmetic with radix-16 multipliers and 4–2 compressors to reduce the transistor count. The chip was fabricated in a 0.35-μm CMOS process, measures 3.1×4.4 mm and contains 310,000 transistors. The chip is pipelined and has a maximum clock rate of 200 MHz. It is shown that the error table compensation system is capable of providing between 7 and 13 dB improvement in the dynamic range of typical high-speed A/D converters.     

A4‐sized flexible ferroelectric liquid‐crystal displays with micro color filters

Abstract— We demonstrated an A4‐paper‐sized flexible ferroelectric liquid‐crystal (FLC) color displays fabricated by using a new plastic‐substrate‐based process which was developed for large‐sized devices. Finely patterned color filters and ITO electrodes were formed on a plastic substrate by a transfer method to avoid surface roughness and thermal distortion of the substrate, which induce disordering of the FLC molecular alignment. The thickness of an FLC/monomer solution sandwiched by two plastic‐film substrates was well controlled over a large area by using flexographic printing and lamination techniques. Molecular‐aligned polymer walls and fibers were formed in the FLC by a two‐step photopolymerization‐induced phase‐separation method using UV‐light irradiation. A fabricated A4‐sized flexible‐sheet display for color‐segment driving was able to exhibit color images even when it was bent.     

Plastic‐film displays with NanoBlock IC drivers integrated by a fluidic self‐assembly process

Abstract— High‐performance compact plastic displays have been built by integrating high‐quality crystalline‐Si NanoBlock IC drivers into plastic films using a fluidic self‐assembly (FSA) process. Plastic‐film‐based liquid‐crystal displays, only 500 μm thick, were integrated into smartcards using NanoBlock IC voltage drivers. In an additional demonstration, polymer‐LED displays were constructed using NanoBlock IC current drivers. FSA technology provides a cost‐effective means of packaging integrated circuits within plastic film, enabling high‐performance backplanes that can be combined with a variety of display media.     

Active‐matrix organic light‐emitting displays employing two thin‐film‐transistor a‐Si:H pixels on flexible stainless‐steel foil

Abstract— An active‐matrix organic light‐emitting diode (AMOLED) display driven by hydrogenated amorphous‐silicon thin‐film transistors (a‐Si:H TFTs) on flexible, stainless‐steel foil was demonstrated. The 2‐TFT voltage‐programmed pixel circuits were fabricated using a standard a‐Si:H process at maximum temperature of 280°C in a bottom‐gate staggered source‐drain geometry. The 70‐ppi monochrome display consists of (48 × 4) × 48 subpixels of 92 ×369 μm each, with an aperture ratio of 48%. The a‐Si:H TFT pixel circuits drive top‐emitting green electrophosphorescent OLEDs to a peak luminance of 2000 cd/m².     

Design and optimization of LNA topologies with image rejection filters

An important problem in designing RFIC in CMOS technology is the parasitic elements of passive and active devices that complicate design calculations. This article presents three LNA topologies including cascode, folded cascade, and differential cascode and then introduces image rejection filters for low‐side and high‐side injection. Then, a new method for design and optimization of the circuits based on a Pareto‐based multiobjective genetic algorithm is proposed. A set of optimum device values and dimensions that best match design specifications are obtained. The optimization method is layout aware, parasitic aware, and simulation based. Circuit simulations are carried out based on TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology by using Hspice. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2010.     

Effect of guard‐ring on the DC and high‐frequency performance of deep‐submicrometer metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor

The influence of guard‐ring (GR) on the direct current (DC) and high‐frequency performance of deep‐submicrometer metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) is investigated in this study. MOSFETs with four different GRs are fabricated using 90 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process, and a detailed comparative study on their device performances is performed. A united DC and small signal equivalent circuit model that takes into the effect of GR is developed. A set of simple, but efficient formulas provide a bidirectional bridge for the S parameters transformation between devices with different GRs. The corresponding model parameters for MOSFETs with different GRs are determined from S parameter on‐wafer measurement up to 40 GHz. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:259–267, 2014.