The development of flexible integrated circuits based on thin-film transistors

The use of thin-film transistors in liquid-crystal display applications was commercialized about 30 years ago. The key advantages of thin-film transistor technologies compared with traditional silicon complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor(CMOS) transistors are their ability to be manufactured on large substrates at low-cost per unit area and at low processing temperatures, which allows them to be directly integrated onto a variety of flexible substrates. Here, I discuss the potential of thin-film transistor technologies in the development of low-cost, flexible integrated circuits for applications beyond flat-panel displays, including the Internet of Things and lightweight wearable electronics. Focusing on the relatively mature thin-film transistor technologies that are available in semiconductor fabrication plants today, the different technologies are evaluated in terms of their potential circuit applications and the implications they will have in the design of integrated circuits, from basic logic gates to more complex digital and analogue systems. I also discuss microprocessors and non-silicon, near-field communication tags that can communicate with smartphones, and I propose the concept of a Moore’s law for flexible electronics.This Perspective discusses the potential of thin-film transistor technologies in the development of low-cost, flexible integrated circuits, evaluating the more mature technologies available today in terms of their potential circuit applications and the implications they will have in the design of integrated circuits.

[1]  Arthur H. M. van Roermund,et al.  Analogue Frontend Amplifiers for Bio-Potential Measurements Manufactured With a-IGZO TFTs on Flexible Substrate , 2017, IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems.

[2]  Zhiwei Zhou,et al.  Stretchable EMI Measurement Sheet With 8 $\times$ 8 Coil Array, 2 V Organic CMOS Decoder, and 0.18$\ \mu$m Silicon CMOS LSIs for Electric and Magnetic Field Detection , 2010, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[3]  Wei-Ting Lin,et al.  Ultra low voltage 1-V RFID tag implement in a-IGZO TFT technology on plastic , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Conference on RFID (RFID).

[4]  Arthur H. M. van Roermund,et al.  Positive-Feedback Level Shifter Logic for Large-Area Electronics , 2014, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[5]  Robert A. Street,et al.  All jet-printed polymer thin-film transistor active-matrix backplanes , 2004 .

[6]  Wim Dehaene,et al.  An 8-Bit, 40-Instructions-Per-Second Organic Microprocessor on Plastic Foil , 2012, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[7]  A. Sumant,et al.  All two-dimensional, flexible, transparent, and thinnest thin film transistor. , 2014, Nano letters.

[8]  Wim Dehaene,et al.  Flexible selfbiased 66.7nJ/c.s. 6bit 26S/s successive-approximation C-2C ADC with offset cancellation using unipolar Metal-Oxide TFTs , 2017, 2017 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC).

[9]  Paul Heremans,et al.  Mechanical and Electronic Properties of Thin‐Film Transistors on Plastic, and Their Integration in Flexible Electronic Applications , 2016, Advanced materials.

[10]  Ole Bethge,et al.  A microprocessor based on a two-dimensional semiconductor , 2016, Nature Communications.

[11]  Manoj Sachdev,et al.  Low-Power Bootstrapped Rail-to-Rail Logic Gates for Thin-Film Applications , 2016, Journal of Display Technology.

[12]  Wim Dehaene,et al.  A thin-film microprocessor with inkjet print-programmable memory , 2014, Scientific Reports.

[13]  Wim Dehaene,et al.  15.2 A flexible ISO14443-A compliant 7.5mW 128b metal-oxide NFC barcode tag with direct clock division circuit from 13.56MHz carrier , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

[14]  E. Fortunato,et al.  Oxide Semiconductor Thin‐Film Transistors: A Review of Recent Advances , 2012 .

[15]  Yung-Hui Yeh,et al.  Pseudo-CMOS: A Design Style for Low-Cost and Robust Flexible Electronics , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[16]  Jong-Hyun Ahn,et al.  All graphene-based thin film transistors on flexible plastic substrates. , 2012, Nano letters.

[17]  Deji Akinwande,et al.  Extremely High-Frequency Flexible Graphene Thin-Film Transistors , 2016, IEEE Electron Device Letters.

[18]  D. Akinwande,et al.  Flexible black phosphorus ambipolar transistors, circuits and AM demodulator. , 2015, Nano letters.

[19]  Jong-Hyun Ahn,et al.  Highly Flexible Hybrid CMOS Inverter Based on Si Nanomembrane and Molybdenum Disulfide. , 2016, Small.

[20]  Tatsuya Shimoda,et al.  21.3: Flexible Color AM‐OLED Display Fabricated Using Surface Free Technology by Laser Ablation/Annealing (SUFTLA®) and Ink‐jet Printing Technology , 2003 .

[21]  Marcel J. M. Pelgrom,et al.  Matching properties of MOS transistors , 1989 .

[22]  H. Ozaki,et al.  20-µW operation of an a-IGZO TFT-based RFID chip using purely NMOS “active” load logic gates with ultra-low-consumption power , 2011, 2011 Symposium on VLSI Circuits - Digest of Technical Papers.

[23]  Erik van Veenendaal,et al.  A 13.56-MHz RFID System Based on Organic Transponders , 2006, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[24]  Joachim N. Burghartz,et al.  Hybrid Systems in foil (HySiF) exploiting ultra-thin flexible chips , 2014, 2014 44th European Solid State Device Research Conference (ESSDERC).

[25]  Wei Xiong,et al.  A 3-V, 6-Bit C-2C Digital-to-Analog Converter Using Complementary Organic Thin-Film Transistors on Glass , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[26]  Luigi Colalongo,et al.  Unipolar Differential Logic for Large-Scale Integration of Flexible aIGZO Circuits , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[27]  Makoto Mizukami,et al.  Fully-printed high-performance organic thin-film transistors and circuitry on one-micron-thick polymer films , 2014, Nature Communications.

[28]  Wim Dehaene,et al.  A Thin-Film, a-IGZO, 128b SRAM and LPROM Matrix With Integrated Periphery on Flexible Foil , 2017, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[29]  Chang Liu,et al.  A review of carbon nanotube- and graphene-based flexible thin-film transistors. , 2013, Small.

[30]  Deji Akinwande,et al.  Two-dimensional flexible nanoelectronics , 2014, Nature Communications.

[31]  Y. Kobayashi,et al.  30-nm-channel-length c-axis aligned crystalline In-Ga-Zn-O transistors with low off-state leakage current and steep subthreshold characteristics , 2015, 2015 Symposium on VLSI Technology (VLSI Technology).

[32]  G. Gelinck,et al.  Flexible active-matrix displays and shift registers based on solution-processed organic transistors , 2004, Nature materials.

[33]  J. Rogers,et al.  Medium-scale carbon nanotube thin-film integrated circuits on flexible plastic substrates , 2008, Nature.

[34]  Kris Myny,et al.  Flexible thin-film NFC tags , 2015, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[35]  N. Karaki,et al.  A flexible 8b asynchronous microprocessor based on low-temperature poly-silicon TFT technology , 2005, ISSCC. 2005 IEEE International Digest of Technical Papers. Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2005..

[36]  Sangsig Kim,et al.  Flexible logic circuits composed of chalcogenide-nanocrystal-based thin film transistors. , 2010, Nanotechnology.

[37]  P. Stallinga.  Thin Film Transistors , 2009, 2007 65th Annual Device Research Conference.

[38]  Vivek Subramanian,et al.  Progress Toward Development of All-Printed RFID Tags: Materials, Processes, and Devices , 2005, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[39]  Arthur H. M. van Roermund,et al.  15.3 An a-IGZO asynchronous delta-sigma modulator on foil achieving up to 43dB SNR and 40dB SNDR in 300Hz bandwidth , 2017, 2017 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

[40]  M. Kaltenbrunner,et al.  An ultra-lightweight design for imperceptible plastic electronics , 2013, Nature.

[41]  Kris Myny,et al.  Dual‐Gate Thin‐Film Transistors, Integrated Circuits and Sensors , 2011, Advanced materials.

[42]  Yu-Jen Chang,et al.  A General Route to Printable High‐Mobility Transparent Amorphous Oxide Semiconductors , 2007 .

[43]  H.-S. Philip Wong,et al.  Carbon nanotube computer , 2013, Nature.

[44]  Wei Zhang,et al.  Printed, sub-3V digital circuits on plastic from aqueous carbon nanotube inks. , 2010, ACS nano.

[45]  Luca Maiolo,et al.  Polysilicon thin-film transistors on polymer substrates , 2012 .

[46]  Joachim N. Burghartz,et al.  Combining organic and printed electronics in Hybrid System in Foil (HySiF) based smart skin for robotic applications , 2015, 2015 European Microelectronics Packaging Conference (EMPC).

[47]  Kris Myny,et al.  16.6 Flexible thin-film NFC transponder chip exhibiting data rates compatible to ISO NFC standards using self-aligned metal-oxide TFTs , 2016, 2016 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC).

[48]  Byung-Do Yang,et al.  A Transparent Logic Circuit for RFID Tag in a‐IGZO TFT Technology , 2013 .

[49]  H. Ohta,et al.  Room-temperature fabrication of transparent flexible thin-film transistors using amorphous oxide semiconductors , 2004, Nature.

[50]  Takao Someya,et al.  1 $\mu$m-Thickness Ultra-Flexible and High Electrode-Density Surface Electromyogram Measurement Sheet With 2 V Organic Transistors for Prosthetic Hand Control , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

[51]  Wenchuan Wang,et al.  A hybrid absorption–adsorption method to efficiently capture carbon , 2014, Nature Communications.

[52]  R. Baughman,et al.  Carbon Nanotubes: Present and Future Commercial Applications , 2013, Science.

[53]  Luisa Petti,et al.  Flexible Self-Aligned Amorphous InGaZnO Thin-Film Transistors With Submicrometer Channel Length and a Transit Frequency of 135 MHz , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[54]  Adrian Avendano-Bolivar,et al.  Low-Temperature Hybrid CMOS Circuits Based on Chalcogenides and Organic TFTs , 2011, IEEE Electron Device Letters.

[55]  H. Sirringhaus,et al.  High-Resolution Ink-Jet Printing of All-Polymer Transistor Circuits , 2000, Science.

[56]  Jong-Seok Kim,et al.  Dynamic Logic Circuits Using a-IGZO TFTs , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.

[57]  Tatsuya Sasaoka,et al.  Novel self‐aligned top‐gate oxide TFT for AMOLED displays , 2012 .

[58]  S. Bauer,et al.  Materials for stretchable electronics , 2012 .

[59]  John Sartori,et al.  Bespoke processors for applications with ultra-low area and power constraints , 2017, 2017 ACM/IEEE 44th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA).

[60]  P. Heremans,et al.  Noise-Margin Analysis for Organic Thin-Film Complementary Technology , 2010, IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices.