An Inkjet-Printed Full-Wave Rectifier for Low-Voltage Operation Using Electrolyte-Gated Indium-Oxide Thin-Film Transistors

Rectifiersare vital electroniccircuits for signal and power conversion in varioussmart sensor applications. The ability to process low input voltage levels, for example, from vibrational energy harvesters is a major challenge with existing passive rectifiers in printed electronics, stemming mainly from the built-in potential of the diode's p-n-junction. To address this problem, in this work, we design, fabricate, and characterize an inkjet-printed full-wave rectifier using diode-connected electrolyte-gated thin-film transistors (EGTs). Using both experimental and simulation approaches, we investigate how the rectifier can benefit from the near-zero threshold voltage of transistors, which can be enabled by proper channel geometry setting in EGT technology. The presented circuit can be operated at 1-V input voltage, featuring a remarkably small voltage loss of 140mV and a cutoff frequency of similar to 300 Hz. Below the cutoff frequency, more than 2.6-mu W dc power is obtained over the load resistances ranging from 5 to 20 k Omega. Furthermore, experiments show that the circuit can work with an input amplitudedown to 500mV. This featuremakes the presented design highly suitable for a variety of energy-harvesting applications.