A 0.5-V 5.2-fJ/Conversion-Step Full Asynchronous SAR ADC With Leakage Power Reduction Down to 650 pW by Boosted Self-Power Gating in 40-nm CMOS

This paper presents an ultralow-power and ultralow-voltage SAR ADC. Full asynchronous operation and boosted self-power gating are proposed to improve conversion accuracy and reduce static leakage power. By designing with MOSFET of high threshold voltage (HV_t) and low threshold voltage (LV_t), the leakage power is reduced without decrease of maximum sampling frequency. The test chip in 40-nm CMOS process has successfully reduced leakage power by 98%, and it achieves 8.2-bit ENOB and while consuming only 650 pW at 0.1 kS/s from 0.5-V power supply. The power consumption is scalable up to 4 MS/s and power supply range from 0.4 to 0.7 V. The best figure of merit at 0.5 V is 5.2 fJ/conversion-step at 20 kS/s.