A CMOS based fast high-voltage generation circuit for bicmos embedded RF-MEMS applications

A CMOS based high voltage generation circuit with very fast rise and fall time performance is presented. The entire sub-block designs, namely ring oscillator, charge pump and the discharge resistor, are given. The rise and the fall time of the generated output voltage are characterized using both electrical and optical techniques. The results show that generation of up to 40V signal with a rise time of less than 10μs is possible. The fall time, which is also very critical specification considering the fast switching applications, strongly depends on the discharge resistor but less than 15μs fall times are achieved using 250KΩ discharge resistor with an expense of higher power consumption.