A Regulated Charge Pump for Tunneling Floating-Gate Transistors

• Published in: IEEE transactions on circuits and systems. I, Regular papers Regular papers, 2017-03, Vol.64 (3), p.516-527
• Main Authors: Rumberg, Brandon, Graham, David W., Navidi, Mir Mohammad
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analog memory; Batteries; Charge pumps; closed-loop systems; CMOS; CMOS integrated circuits; CMOS process; Components industry; Computer memory; Embedded systems; flash memories; Flash memory (computers); floating-gate transistors; Input output; Logic gates; Power consumption; Semiconductor devices; Short circuits; short-circuit currents; System on chip; Transistors; Tunneling; variable-frequency regulation; Voltage control
• ISSN: 1549-8328; 1558-0806
• DOI: 10.1109/TCSI.2016.2613080

Flash memory is an important component in many embedded system-on-a-chip applications, which drives the need to generate high write/erase voltages in generic CMOS processes. In this paper, we present a regulated, high-voltage charge pump for erasing Flash memory and floating-gate transistors. This 0.069-mm 2 charge pump was fabricated in a 0.35 μm standard CMOS process. While operating from a 2.5 V supply, the charge pump generates regulated voltages up to 16 V with a PSRR of 52 dB and an output impedance of 6.8 kQ. To reduce power consumption for use in battery-powered applications, this charge pump uses a variable-frequency regulation technique and a new circuit for minimizing short-circuit current in the clock-generation circuitry; the resulting charge pump is able to erase the charge on floating-gate transistors using only 1.45μJ.