A Low-Temperature Poly-Silicon Thin Film Transistor Pixel Circuit for Active-Matrix Simultaneous Neurostimulation

This work reports a novel low-temperature poly-silicon thin-film-transistor-based pixel circuit for active-matrix neurostimulation. The pixel circuit consists of four transistors and one capacitor (4T1C) for programmable current-mode stimulation, which are designed for storing stimulation intensity...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Taoming Guo, Bowen Liu, Jiwei Zou, Hanbin Ma, Yongpan Liu, Xueqing Li, Huazhong Yang, Chen Jiang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2023-01-01
Series:IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10318153/
Description
Summary:This work reports a novel low-temperature poly-silicon thin-film-transistor-based pixel circuit for active-matrix neurostimulation. The pixel circuit consists of four transistors and one capacitor (4T1C) for programmable current-mode stimulation, which are designed for storing stimulation intensity information, simultaneously stimulating a large number of channels, and discharging stimulation electrodes. Due to the high mobility and low threshold voltages of the devices, the fabricated circuit occupies a pixel area of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$200\times 200\,\,\mu \text{m}\,\,^{\mathrm{ 2}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, and delivers a stimulation current of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$147 ~\mu \text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, sufficient to stimulate a neuron. The turn-on resistance of the fabricated transistor is below 6 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text{k}\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, sufficient to be used as switches for bioelectronic applications. By employing a discharging switch transistor, the accumulated charges on the stimulation electrodes were released, and the electrode voltage was reduced to 0.08 V, thus mitigating corrosion. We demonstrated that two pixel circuits at different rows and columns can output stimuli simultaneously without a noticeable delay. This pixel circuit shows high potential to scale up as an active-matrix neurostimulation system with a high channel count.
ISSN:2168-6734