A driver circuit based on the emerging GaN-on-CMOS process for the emerging Electroluminescent panels

Abstract

The ElectroLuminescent (EL) panel is an emerging backplane lighting technology for advertising displays and facade (building) decoration. Compared to conventional lighting technologies, the major advantages of the emerging EL panel include large panel format (e.g. >100m2), significantly more-even illumination uniformity, (mechanical) flexibility, thinner form-factor, etc. As EL lighting is emerging, its driver circuit design is commensurably nascent, particularly for large EL panels, e.g., the driver circuit for very large EL panels (>100m2) remains unreported. In this paper, we describe the peculiarities of the EL panel and our design of a driver, based on the traditional LDMOS process and on the emerging GaN-on-CMOS process, capable of driving a large 100m2 EL panel. We show that the emerging GaN-on-CMOS process is advantageous over the traditional LDMOS, particularly the 37% reduced power dissipation and hence the ensuing substantially reduced heat sink form factor.