A 650 nA Quiescent Current, 0.35 V/2 V, All-MOS Subthreshold Voltage Reference Without Amplifiers

This study proposes a 650 nA quiescent current and all-MOS transistors voltage reference without using amplifiers. To reduce quiescent current, all transistors working in the subthreshold region is implemented with a standard 180 nm CMOS process. A MOS subdivision circuit without using amplifiers and consuming quite low power is proposed to shift the reference voltage <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V</i><sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>REF</i>1</sub> of 0.35 V to a higher voltage level <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V_REF</i> around 2 V; meanwhile a high-order temperature compensation paths are also proposed to obtain a lower temperature coefficient (TC) for <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V_REF</i> . Measurement results showed that a total current as low as 650 nA and reference voltages around 0.35 V and 2.0 V are obtained. Without external trimming circuit <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V</i><sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><i>REF</i>1</sub> and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">V_REF</i> achieve a mean TC (temperature coefficient) of 573.9 ppm/°C and 435.3 ppm/°C respectively, where the temperature ranged from -40 to 85 °C.