A High-Voltage-Compliant 86% Peak Efficiency Current-Mode Stimulator With Dynamic Voltage Supply for Implantable Medical Devices

This article introduces a high-voltage (HV) compliant, energy-efficient current-mode stimulator featuring a proposed boost-based dynamic voltage supply (DVS) to minimize the voltage dropout. The stimulator employs an activate-on-demand asynchronous strategy, instructing the boost converter to generate the dynamically increased high voltage that tracks the electrode’s voltage drop, thus achieving a near-adiabatic stimulation. The strategy relies on measuring the boost’s varying voltage conversion ratio (VCR), which is facilitated by an 8-bit voltage ratio quantizer (VRQ) proposed in this article. Furthermore, the boost converter employs a low-power, fast-speed, HV gate driver (HVGD) to control its p-type power switch that connects the inductor to the HV output. This article also presents a dedicated digital circuit that generates the pulse signals for controlling the n-type power switch and the HVGD. This digital circuit is driven by a five-phase clock from a current-starved ring oscillator. A highly efficient rotationally symmetric level shifter is utilized for the ring oscillator’s output, translating its level and improving its rise/fall time. The boost converter reaches a peak efficiency of 90.2%, enabling the stimulator to achieve an end-to-end energy efficiency of up to 86% during a biphasic stimulation of 6 mA. The stimulator IC, fabricated using 0.18-<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol {\mu }\mathbf {m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> bipolar-CMOS–DMOS (BCD) technology, occupies a compact area of 2.16 mm2. It exhibits low static power consumption at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.78~\boldsymbol {\mu }\mathbf {W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, promising battery-powered implants with an extended lifetime and a reduced form factor.