Design of a Fully Integrated Low Voltage, High Efficiency Capacitive, DC-DC Converter for Energy Harvesting Applications

In this paper, a low voltage boost DC-DC converter has been presented. The circuit can be used for increasing the output voltage of miniature low voltage generators such as TEG, solar and piezoelectric. The converter is fully integrated and works with low voltages as low as 200 mV, and the output voltage can reach 1 V. Body biasing has been used to handle low input voltages. The output power density is 50 µW/mm2, and the converter uses 5 cross coupled stages with 76% efficiency. The maximum total efficiency of the converter for 6 µA load is 52%. The converter uses 0.2 mm2 of chip area using 90 nm technology.