A compact, programmable, 17 mV to 10 V compliant, current source for neural stimulation

This paper presents a programmable current source circuit aimed at neuromodulation applications capable of achieving a peak efficiency of 98 % during the stimulation phase. It also offers a high voltage compliance almost 10 V. The circuit is based on our previous work that leverages a small drain-source voltage of transistors working in the triode region to improve the efficiency. The circuit was designed in a commercially-available 180 nm HV CMOS technology. The circuit area is 0.021 mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>. The circuit achieves a minimum operating output voltage of just 17 mV.