A Bipolar ±13 mV Self-Starting and 85% Peak Efficiency DC/DC Converter for Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting
Abstract
This paper presents a novel converter for boosting the low-voltage output of thermoelectric energy harvesters to power standard electronic circuits. The converter can start up from a fully depleted state of the system off a bipolar ±13 mV input and can boost it to output voltages of up to 5 V. The converter comprises two transformers, one for each polarity that are multiplexed between an oscillator (used during startup) and a flyback converter (used during normal operation). To eliminate leakage currents in the input stage, the unused converter is completely turned off at startup and both converters are automatically shut off if the input power is found to be too low. Measurement results of the converter designed in a 180 nm CMOS process demonstrate a peak end-to-end conversion efficiency of 85% and nearly perfect impedance matching over the full input voltage range. This is the first time that a converter for ultra-low bipolar input voltages achieves the same performance as a unipolar converter.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Oct 20, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.3390/en13205501
Entities
People
- Bernd Deutschmann
- Douglas Tham
- Harald Dillersberger
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency