Three-Level Output Side Gate Driver for 1 V Thin-Gate-Oxide NMOSFET Switch in a SIDO Converter

This paper presents a three-level output side gate driver circuit for 1 V thin-gate-oxide low-V<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">t</inf> NMOSFET switch in a single inductor dual-output (SIDO) DC-DC converter using 28 nm FDOSI technology. The proposed three-level gate driver ensures almost full gate-to-source voltage swing for optimum device size, and also protects the thin-gate-oxide device from any possible over-voltage stress. The three-level gate driver allows the use of a thin-gate-oxide NMOSFET device at the output of a SIDO converter, resulting in almost three times reduction in combined switching and driver losses compared to a thick-gate-oxide NMOSFET switch. The proposed three-level gate driver and thin-gate-oxide NMOSFET offer almost 26% lesser silicon area compared to a conventional thick-gate-oxide NMOSFET device with a two-level gate driver.