Negative charge pump circuit with large output current and high power efficiency

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new negative charge pump circuit which is based on the Dickson circuit. This circuit overcomes the limitation of the conventional Dickson pump circuit and doubler-based one such as large loss in output voltage, low power efficiency, and small output current. Comparing the new one with the conventional doubler-based circuit at the VDD=8V indicates the pumping time faster by 83.8%, 7 times larger output current, power efficiency better by 23.1%, and the layout area smaller by 15%. We have verified the new pump circuit using the commercial CMOS process with high-voltage devices.