A figure of merit for oscillator-based thin-film circuits on plastic for high-performance signaling, energy harvesting and driving of actuation circuits

For even basic sensing and energy-harvesting functions, large-area systems-on-plastic require digital oscillators as a key circuit block [1]. However, their use to generate control signals, or drive actuator/energy-harvesting circuits requires different performance metrics compared to conventional digital circuits. In this abstract we (1) propose a figure of merit for these applications and (2) show experimentally how the dependence of this new metric on the scaling of resistive loads differs from that of the conventional digital circuit metric of power-delay (PD) product [2].