A Dickson charge pump circuit driven by boosted clock for low-voltage flash memories

In this paper, a Dickson charge pump circuit driven by boosted clock for low-voltage flash memories is proposed. Voltage pumping gain of each stage can be considerably improved by using high-voltage clock instead of using conventional clock. Since the voltage gain of each stage can be considerably increased by using this method, it can generate a high output voltage although the body effect still exists. Simulation results show that it can generate enough voltage to apply to the flash memory even at a supply voltage less than 1.5V. Because this method can be applied to almost all types of the improved Dickson charge pump circuits, it is expected that this method will improve the performance of the high voltage generating circuits for low-voltage flash memories.