A Self-Starting 70 mV-1 V, 65% Peak Efficient, TEG Energy Harvesting Chip with 5 ms Startup Time

This paper presents design and measurement results of a DC DC converter, intended to harvest energy from a thermo-electric generator (TEG). The prototype chip was fabricated in 130 nm CMOS technology. The designed converter can extract maximum power from a TEG, without using an input capacitor (C-IN) or a closed loop maximum peak power tracking circuit to regulate the input voltage (V-IN). The converter uses a low voltage oscillator coupled with charge pump to directly power the auxiliary circuits; and auxiliary circuits drives two inductors in two half cycles of a clock pulse. The measurement has been performed by using a TEG, and a voltage source (50-200 mV) with a series resistance of 5 ohms. The result shows that the prototype can self-starts from 70 mV with 5 ms startup time and can work up to a minimum of 50 mV; and can extract, 57.2% (at 50 mV) to 65% (at 200 mV), of the available power.