IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society (Jan 2021)

An Integrator and Schmitt Trigger Based Voltage-to-Frequency Converter Using Unipolar Metal-Oxide Thin Film Transistors

  • Yuming Xu,
  • Wei Zhong,
  • Bin Li,
  • Sunbin Deng,
  • Houbo Fan,
  • Zhaohui Wu,
  • Lei Lu,
  • Fion Sze Yan Yeung,
  • Hoi Sing Kwok,
  • Rongsheng Chen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/JEDS.2020.3045160
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9
pp. 144 – 150

Abstract

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This article proposes a voltage-to-frequency converter (VFC) design using unipolar metal-oxide thin film transistor (TFT) technology. The proposed VFC has an integrator and Schmitt trigger based structure. This structure has the advantages of constant power consumption, full-swing output, and low circuit complexity compared to the early designs. To verify the proposed design, SmartSpice simulation based on a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) model whose parameters are turned to fix the measured characteristics of our indium tin oxide- (ITO-) stabilized ZnO TFTs is carried out. The ITO-stabilized ZnO TFT has a single-gate staggered structure. Its typical field-effect mobility, threshold voltage, on/off current ratio, and subthreshold-slope are 14.5 cm2/Vs, 0.5 V, $1.2{\mathrm {\times }} 10^{8}$ , and 77 mV/decade, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed VFC has maximum linearity error less than 1.8%, tuning sensitivity about 1 kHz/V, and power consumption less than $130~{\mu }\text{W}$ even under device variations. These performances are competitive compared to the state-of-the-arts. When configured to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), 6 bit resolution and 14 S/s sampling rate can be realized. These results indicate that the VFC can find potential applications in flexible large-area low-voltage sensor interfaces for quasi-static signals.

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