DC to DC Power Conversion

Focus:

An efficient dc-dc converter with low voltage output (in the range of 1 V -3 V) is needed to power signal processing circuitry at the point-of-load in the Atlas collider detector. A charge-pump converter design based on a four-capacitor stack configuration (with divide by 4 voltage transformation) and implemented in 0.35-um commercial HV-CMOS technology is described here. The circuit is simulated and experiments are done on a test chip to verify the concept by characterizing the transistors produced in the selected CMOS process and testing their radiation hardness.

What you’ll learn:

• How to develop a radiation-hardened stepdown dc-dc converter based on a charge-pump design

Notes:

Presented at the 12th Workshop on Electronics for LHC and Future Experiments. For an alternative to the charge pump approach, see the buck converter design discussed in "Ideas on DC-DC Converters for Delivery of Low Voltage and High Currents for the SLHC/ILC Detector Electronics in Magnetic field and Radiation environments," available at http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1028161/files/p442.pdf.

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Author & Publication:

Robert Ely and Mauricio Garcia-Sciveres, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Conference paper, Sep 25 2006

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