A Batteryless Single-Inductor Boost Converter With 190 mV Self-Startup Voltage for Thermal Energy Harvesting Over a Wide Temperature Range

Abstract

In this brief, a batteryless boost converter for thermal energy harvesting is presented. Only single off-chip inductor is employed through inductor sharing technique. A stepping-up architecture consisting of a startup converter and a main converter is adopted. The startup converter activates the chip with an input voltage as low as 190 mV. With zero-current switching and maximum power point tracking techniques, the main converter achieves a peak efficiency of 60% and outputs a maximum power of 400 μW. The converter is capable of maintaining its operation under a minimum input voltage of 50 mV over a wide temperature range from -30 °C to 80 °C. The proposed design has been fabricated with 180 nm CMOS process and been demonstrated with thermal energy harvesting.