Low-power DA-converters for display applications using stepwise charging and charge recovery

The application of adiabatic switching for driving high capacitive loads encountered on the column lines of flat panel displays is investigated. A new digital-to-analog converter using stepwise charging is proposed to minimize power dissipation. Most of the energy stored on the charged column lines can be recovered. The proposed DAC is capable of driving the high capacitive load without any bias current. Therefore, both dynamic and static power dissipation are reduced to a large extent. Simulations of the proposed architecture are compared with a lower bound for the power dissipation based on a simplified model of a conventional implementation demonstrating the potential of the new approach.