Hybrid System Architectures and Circuits Combining Large-Area Electronics and CMOS ICs

Abstract

By enabling diverse and large-scale transducers, large-area electronics raises the potential for electronic systems to interact much more extensively with the physical world than is possible today. This can substantially expand the scope of applications, both in number and in value. But first, translation into applications requires a base of system functions (instrumentation, computation, power management, communication). These cannot be realized on the desired scale by large-area electronics alone. Thus, it is necessary to combine large-area electronics with high-performance, high-efficiency technologies, such as crystalline silicon CMOS, within hybrid systems. Scalable hybrid systems require rethinking the subsystem architectures from the start by considering how the technologies should be interfaced, on both a functional and physical level.

To explore platform architectures along with the supporting circuits and devices, two application drivers are adopted: structural-health monitoring and 3D gesture sensing. The two application drivers address hybrid system design in the context of large-structural scale and human scale, respectively. Functionality partitioning in subsystems between large-area electronics and CMOS ICs is optimized with a focus on system scalability and energy consumption. This research develops principles as well as associated circuits and devices. Using this, we achieve three major systems: a fully self-powered large-scale strain sensing sheet with centimeter-scale spatial resolution for structural health monitoring; and two 3D gesture sensing systems based on extended range capacitance sensing. The gesture sensing can be integrated both on large displays and within everyday objects.