Patent attributes
In one embodiment, a charge pump system includes an input terminal at which an input voltage is received, and an output terminal at which at an output voltage is provided. N stages are connected in cascade between the input terminal and the output terminal. Each of the N stages includes at most one inverter circuit, the inverter circuit having a first transistor connected at a node to a second transistor. A first capacitor is coupled at one end to the node between the first and second transistors, and is coupled at another end to receive one of two non-overlapping phase signals. In each stage, at one value for the one of two non-overlapping phase signals, the first capacitor of the stage is charged by a respective stage input voltage, and at another value for the one of two non-overlapping phase signals the first capacitor of the stage is discharged to provide a respective stage output voltage. The charge pump system is capable of generating the output voltage with a greater magnitude than the input voltage even when the supply voltage is relatively low, e.g., below 1V.
