Switching noise and shoot-through current reduction techniques for switched-capacitor voltage doubler

Switching noise and shoot-through current reduction techniques for switched-capacitor voltage doublers based on cross-coupled structure are presented. The intuitive analysis of the shoot-through current and switching noise generation processes in the doubler is first reported. Break-before-make mechanism is adopted to minimize the shoot-through current, thereby greatly reducing the no-load supply current dissipation and improving the light-load power efficiency of the voltage doubler. In addition, by employing gate-slope reduction technique at the serial power transistor during turn-on, the switching noise of the voltage doubler is significantly lowered. Two voltage doublers with and without the proposed circuit techniques have been fabricated in a 0.6-μm CMOS process. Experimental results verify that the total supply current at no-load condition of the proposed voltage doubler is reduced by two fold and its switching noise is decreased by 2.5 times.