PhD Defense: 'Light Micro-Energy Harvesting in Standard CMOS Technologies'

The goal of this PhD thesis is to design a light micro-energy harvesting system in standard CMOS technologies including an on-chip solar cell and the Power Management Unit (PMU) on the same silicon substrate. To this end, two new accurate models were developed to help in the design process of charger pumps. Then, with the help of these models, a new architecture of an energy harvesting system which consists of a PMU powered by a 1 mm2 on-chip solar cell to rise up the harvested voltage to an output voltage higher than 1.1 V was successfully designed and tested. The PMU is able to start up from a harvested power of 2.38 nW without any external kick off or control signal achieving a peak efficiency of 57% during normal operation.