Low start-up voltage dca??dc converter with negative voltage control for thermoelectric energy harvesting

摘要

This Letter presents a low start-up voltage dca??dc converter for low-power thermoelectric systems which uses a native n-type MOS transistor as the start-up switch. The start-up voltage of the proposed converter is 300 mV and the converter does not need batteries to start up. The negative voltage control is proposed to reduce the leakage current caused by native n-type transistor and increase the efficiency. The proposed converter was designed using standard 0.18 ?μm CMOS process with chip size of 0.388 mm2. The peak efficiency is 63% at load current of 1.5 mA. The proposed converter provides output voltage &1 V at maximum load current of 3.2 mA.