A dual-power-path charge pump for solar-energy harvesting

A 5-stage linear charge pump with dual power paths for solar-energy harvesting, implemented in a standard CMOS 180-nm technology, is proposed. The dual power paths are implemented by normal-V-TH and low-V-TH MOSFETs. The low-V-TH MOSFET path reduces the minimum input voltage to 132.5 mV under no-load condition, and another path formed by both low-V-TH and normal-V-TH MOSFETs achieves output current up to 11 mA at 0.3 V supply. With proposed arrangement of normal-V-TH and low-V-TH MOSFETs, reversion loss due to the leakage current of low-V-TH MOSFETs in off-state is minimized to achieve peak power-conversion efficiency of 85%.