TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of bending on flexible metal oxide TFTs and oscillator circuits
AU - Afsar, Yasmin
AU - Tang, Jenny
AU - Rieutort-Louis, Warren
AU - Huang, Liechao
AU - Hu, Yingzhe
AU - Sanz-Robinson, Josue
AU - Verma, Naveen
AU - Wagner, Sigurd
AU - Sturm, James C.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the National Science Foundation for supporting this research (Grants ECCS-1202168 and CCF-1218206), the Princeton Program in Plasma Science and Technology (Grant DE-AC02_09CH11466), and Prof. T. N. Jackson and his students Yangyang Liu and Israel Ramirez for their guidance and support.
Publisher Copyright:
© Copyright 2016 Society for Information Display
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - 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 fT. 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.
AB - 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 fT. 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.
KW - TFT circuits
KW - flexible electronics
KW - large-area electronics (LAE)
KW - oxide thin-film transistor (TFT)
KW - plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD)
KW - thin-film/CMOS hybrid systems
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U2 - 10.1002/jsid.445
DO - 10.1002/jsid.445
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84971418563
SN - 1071-0922
VL - 24
SP - 371
EP - 380
JO - Journal of the Society for Information Display
JF - Journal of the Society for Information Display
IS - 6
ER -