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MOS only nano-watt sub-bandgap voltage reference

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Abstract

This paper presents a nano-watt bandgap voltage reference (BGR). The self-cascode structure is provided as a proportional-to-absolute-temperature (PTAT) voltage. Due to the low slope of the PTAT voltage, a voltage divider consisting of five similar MOSFET transistors is presented. The resulting output voltage will be one-fifth of the complementary-to-absolute-temperature voltage and four-fifths of the PTAT voltage. All MOSFETs are standard CMOS transistors biased in the sub-threshold region where one of them is utilized as a diode. Post-layout simulation results using the standard 0.18 µm CMOS process show a nominal output voltage of 0.132 V. The power consumption is 12.7 nW at 0.7 V of the power supply. The average temperature coefficient (TC) is about 28.5 ppm/°C over a temperature range of 0 °C–100 °C. The proposed BGR occupies a small area of 0.00083 mm2.

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The author declares that there is no specific grant from any funding agency for this research in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Mohammad Rashtian designed, wrote and simulated the proposed work.

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Correspondence to Mohammad Rashtian.

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Rashtian, M. MOS only nano-watt sub-bandgap voltage reference. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 114, 371–377 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-023-02133-3

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