From Displays to Health Patches: The Broad Capabilities of TFTs (.PDF Download)

Thin-film transistors (TFTs) made of indium-gallium-zinc-oxide (IGZO) as the semiconducting material are typically used in backplane circuits for displays. TFTs offer many complementary features compared to silicon-based transistors, such as processing on large-area glass or flexible substrates, extremely low leakage current in standby mode, ability to drive mixed voltages, and the potential to achieve a lower cost per unit area.

By using silicon-like circuit design flows, IGZO-TFT-based circuits can be designed and integrated into applications beyond displays. These include large-area imagers for fingerprint sensing, printed sensor readout for wearable health patches, RFID tags for connecting physical objects to the Internet of Everything, and many others.