An IC chip of a Dickson-type DC-DC converter with bootstrapped gate transfer switches

A VLSI chip of a Dickson-type DC-DC converter with bootstrapped gate transfer switches is introduced in this paper. In the proposed converter, high efficiency can be achieved by adopting novel bootstrap circuits to power-switches. Via maximum circuits constructed with diodes, the voltage of forward stage is charged to a capacitor in the bootstrap circuit. By connecting the charged-capacitor between the gate terminals of power-switches and the output terminal of the maximum circuit, the bootstrap circuits reduce the on-resistance of the power-switches. The SPICE simulations for the proposed circuit show that the voltage efficiency of DC-DC conversion is more than 90% when the output load R_o=500 Ω. Furthermore, the proposed circuit is implemented into a 2.3×2.3 mm chip in the chip fabrication program of VLSI Design and Education Center (VDEC). The IC chip can be fabricated by a standard 1.2 μm CMOS process.