Flexible silicon nanowire low-power ring oscillator featuring one-volt operation

Abstract

In this study, we propose a flexible silicon nanowire (SiNW) low-power ring oscillator, which features 1-V operation. Our flexible ring oscillator is composed of three CMOS inverters with a gain of 70 at a supply voltage of 1 V. p- and n-channel SiNW field-effect transistors (FETs) forming the component inverters exhibit on/off current ratios of 4.36 x 10(4) and 1.46 x 10(5), respectively. Our ring oscillator generates a sinusoidal wave with a frequency of similar to 6.6 MHz. The frequency and waveform are undistorted under upwardly bent and downwardly bent strain conditions of 0.7%. The good mechanical bendability of the flexible ring oscillator indicates high stability and good fatigue properties. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.