A highly efficient CMOS charge pump for 1.2 V supply voltage

In this paper a new integrated charge pump is presented, suitable for current 1.2 V CMOS processes. It is based on both n-MOS and p-MOS pass-transistors with dynamic control of the gate and body voltages. By controlling the gate and the bulk of the pass-transistors, the voltage loss due to the device threshold is removed and the charge is pumped from one stage to the other with negligible voltage drop. The proposed charge pump can be integrated in a standard low-voltage technology: the low-voltage transistors and the simple 2-phase clocking scheme allow the use of higher frequencies, compared to conventional solutions, leading to higher currents, high efficiency and smaller area.