Prospects of Tunnel FETs in the Design of Power Management Circuits for Weak Energy Harvesting DC Sources

David Nunes Cavalheiro; Francesc Moll; Stanimir Valtchev

doi:10.1109/JEDS.2018.2808950

Prospects of Tunnel FETs in the Design of Power Management Circuits for Weak Energy Harvesting DC Sources

David Nunes Cavalheiro, Francesc Moll, Stanimir Valtchev

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)

23 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In this paper, a new tunnel FET (TFET)-based power management circuit (PMC) is proposed for weak dc energy harvesting sources. Thanks to their particular carrier injection mechanisms, TFETs can be used to design efficient energy harvesting circuits by enabling the power extraction from sources which are not only at very low voltage levels (sub-0.1 V) but also at very low power levels (a few nW). As TFET devices are designed as reverse-biased diodes, changes in conventional circuit topologies are required in order to take full advantage of these emerging devices. The circuit design techniques proposed in this paper represent an improvement in output voltage and input power range with respect to previously published TFET-based PMCs. Simulation results show that the TFET-based PMC can sustain itself from a 2.5 nW@50 mV dc source, powering a load at 0.5 V with 29% of efficiency.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	382-391
Number of pages	10
Journal	IEEE Journal of the Electron Devices Society
Volume	6
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/JEDS.2018.2808950
Publication status	Published - 22 Feb 2018

Keywords

Boost converter
energy harvesting
low-voltage
nanopower
power management
tunnel FET

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Prospects of Tunnel FETs in the Design of Power Management Circuits for Weak Energy Harvesting DC SourcesFinal published version, 2.22 MBLicence: CC BY

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title = "Prospects of Tunnel FETs in the Design of Power Management Circuits for Weak Energy Harvesting DC Sources",

abstract = "In this paper, a new tunnel FET (TFET)-based power management circuit (PMC) is proposed for weak dc energy harvesting sources. Thanks to their particular carrier injection mechanisms, TFETs can be used to design efficient energy harvesting circuits by enabling the power extraction from sources which are not only at very low voltage levels (sub-0.1 V) but also at very low power levels (a few nW). As TFET devices are designed as reverse-biased diodes, changes in conventional circuit topologies are required in order to take full advantage of these emerging devices. The circuit design techniques proposed in this paper represent an improvement in output voltage and input power range with respect to previously published TFET-based PMCs. Simulation results show that the TFET-based PMC can sustain itself from a 2.5 nW@50 mV dc source, powering a load at 0.5 V with 29% of efficiency.",

keywords = "Boost converter, energy harvesting, low-voltage, nanopower, power management, tunnel FET",

author = "Cavalheiro, {David Nunes} and Francesc Moll and Stanimir Valtchev",

note = "This work was supported in part by the Portuguese Funding Institution (Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia), and in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and ERDF Funds (Maragda) under Project TEC2013-45638-C3-2-R.",

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AU - Moll, Francesc

AU - Valtchev, Stanimir

N1 - This work was supported in part by the Portuguese Funding Institution (Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia), and in part by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and ERDF Funds (Maragda) under Project TEC2013-45638-C3-2-R.

PY - 2018/2/22

Y1 - 2018/2/22

N2 - In this paper, a new tunnel FET (TFET)-based power management circuit (PMC) is proposed for weak dc energy harvesting sources. Thanks to their particular carrier injection mechanisms, TFETs can be used to design efficient energy harvesting circuits by enabling the power extraction from sources which are not only at very low voltage levels (sub-0.1 V) but also at very low power levels (a few nW). As TFET devices are designed as reverse-biased diodes, changes in conventional circuit topologies are required in order to take full advantage of these emerging devices. The circuit design techniques proposed in this paper represent an improvement in output voltage and input power range with respect to previously published TFET-based PMCs. Simulation results show that the TFET-based PMC can sustain itself from a 2.5 nW@50 mV dc source, powering a load at 0.5 V with 29% of efficiency.

AB - In this paper, a new tunnel FET (TFET)-based power management circuit (PMC) is proposed for weak dc energy harvesting sources. Thanks to their particular carrier injection mechanisms, TFETs can be used to design efficient energy harvesting circuits by enabling the power extraction from sources which are not only at very low voltage levels (sub-0.1 V) but also at very low power levels (a few nW). As TFET devices are designed as reverse-biased diodes, changes in conventional circuit topologies are required in order to take full advantage of these emerging devices. The circuit design techniques proposed in this paper represent an improvement in output voltage and input power range with respect to previously published TFET-based PMCs. Simulation results show that the TFET-based PMC can sustain itself from a 2.5 nW@50 mV dc source, powering a load at 0.5 V with 29% of efficiency.

KW - Boost converter

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KW - power management

KW - tunnel FET

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Prospects of Tunnel FETs in the Design of Power Management Circuits for Weak Energy Harvesting DC Sources

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