Investigation of Polysilicon Thin-Film Transistor Technology for RF Applications

The low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) thin-film transistor (TFT) is an emerging technology to manufacture active matrix liquid crystal displays. With the TFT´s maximum frequency of oscillation f_max exceeding 3.5 GHz, it becomes feasible to develop integrated circuits (ICs) in LTPS TFT technology to facilitate system on panel or system on display. This paper investigates the LTPS TFT characteristics for developing RF ICs. The dc and ac equivalent-circuit models were developed for LTPS TFT RF integrated-circuit design. A phase-locked loop (PLL) was demonstrated using the 3-μm LTPS TFT technology. The supply voltage and power consumption of the PLL are 8.4 V and 25 mW, respectively. The operation frequency range of the TFT PLL is from 2 to 10 MHz, and the measured root-mean-square jitter is 235 ps.