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

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 cm
²
/Vs, 0.5 V, 1.2×10
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 μW 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.