Thin-film circuits for scalable interfacing between large-area electronics and CMOS ICs

Abstract

Hybrid systems based on large-area electronics (LAE) and CMOS ICs aim to exploit the complementary strengths of the two technologies: the scalability of LAE for forming interconnects and transducers (for sensing and energy harvesting), and the energy efficiency of CMOS for instrumentation and computation. The viability of large-scale systems depends on maximizing the robustness and minimizing the number of interfaces between the LAE and CMOS domains. To maximize robustness, inductive and capacitive coupling has been explored, avoiding the need for metallurgical bonding [1]. To minimize the number of interfaces, a method to access and readout individual sensors via minimal coupling channels, is crucial. In this abstract, we present a thin-film transistor (TFT) based scanning circuit that requires only three capacitively-coupled control signals from the IC to sequentially access an arbitrarily large number of LAE sensors, enabling a single readout interface (Fig. 1). A key attribute of the presented circuit is the low power consumption, which remains nearly constant even as the number of sensors scales.