Thin-film technologies such as Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) enable Flexible Electronics (FE) for emerging applications in wearable sensing, personal health monitoring, and large-area systems. Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) serve as critical sensor interfaces in these systems. Yet, their vulnerability to manufacturing defects remains poorly understood despite unipolar technologies' inherently high defect densities and process variations compared to mature CMOS technologies. We present a hierarchical fault injection framework to characterize defect sensitivity in Binary Search ADCs implemented in n-type only technologies. Our methodology combines transistor-level defect characterization with system-level fault propagation analysis, enabling efficient exploration of both single and multiple fault scenarios across the conversion hierarchy. The framework identifies critical fault-sensitive circuit components and enables selective redundancy strategies targeting only the most sensitive components. The resulting defect-tolerant designs improve fault coverage from 60% to 92% under single-fault injections and from 34% to 77.6% under multi-fault injection, while incurring only 4.2% area overhead and 6% power increase. While validated on IGZO-TFTs, the methodology applies to all emerging unipolar technologies.

翻译：氧化铟镓锌（IGZO）等薄膜技术为可穿戴传感、个人健康监测和大面积系统等新兴应用提供了柔性电子（FE）的实现基础。在这些系统中，模数转换器（ADC）作为关键的传感器接口。然而，尽管单极型技术相比成熟的CMOS技术具有固有的高缺陷密度和工艺变化，但其对制造缺陷的脆弱性仍鲜为人知。本文提出了一种分层故障注入框架，用于表征在仅n型技术中实现的二分搜索ADC的缺陷敏感性。我们的方法将晶体管级缺陷表征与系统级故障传播分析相结合，能够高效地探索转换层次结构中单故障和多故障场景。该框架识别出关键的故障敏感电路组件，并支持仅针对最敏感组件实施选择性冗余策略。由此产生的容错设计在单故障注入下将故障覆盖率从60%提升至92%，在多故障注入下从34%提升至77.6%，而面积开销仅为4.2%，功耗增加仅为6%。虽然该方法在IGZO-TFT上得到验证，但其适用于所有新兴的单极型技术。