A 0.5-V 5.2-fJ/Conversion-Step Full Asynchronous SAR ADC With Leakage Power Reduction Down to 650 pW by Boosted Self-Power Gating in 40-nm CMOS

This paper presents an ultralow-power and ultralow-voltage SAR ADC. Full asynchronous operation and boosted self-power gating are proposed to improve conversion accuracy and reduce static leakage power. By designing with MOSFET of high threshold voltage (HVt) and low threshold voltage (LVt), the leakage power is reduced without decrease of maximum sampling frequency. The test chip in 40-nm CMOS process has successfully reduced leakage power by 98%, and it achieves 8.2-bit ENOB and while consuming only 650 pW at 0.1 kS/s from 0.5-V power supply. The power consumption is scalable up to 4 MS/s and power supply range from 0.4 to 0.7 V. The best figure of merit at 0.5 V is 5.2 fJ/conversion-step at 20 kS/s.