Integrated micro-solar cell structures for harvesting supplied microsystems in 0.35-µm CMOS technology

In this paper we present a solar harvester test chip, realized to characterize several integrated solar cell structures, gathering the information required to design a complete power management system for handling the harvested energy. In particular, we realized photodiodes with three different geometries of the p-diffusion, and three different dimensions of the n-well. The chip is realized in a 0.35-µm CMOS technology, and the diodes feature different active area density, depending on the geometry of the p-diffusions. In order to evaluate the harvesting performance of the solar cells in real applications, we developed an equivalent circuit of the devices, based on the experimental data and we used it to design a power management system specific for discrete-time applications. The power management system is being integrated on the same chip of the micro solar cells, in a 0.35-µm CMOS technology.

[1]  Rajeevan Amirtharajah,et al.  Energy harvesting photodiodes with integrated 2D diffractive storage capacitance , 2008, Proceeding of the 13th international symposium on Low power electronics and design (ISLPED '08).

[2]  Abhiman Hande,et al.  Indoor solar energy harvesting for sensor network router nodes , 2007, Microprocess. Microsystems.

[3]  Mani B. Srivastava,et al.  Harvesting aware power management for sensor networks , 2006, 2006 43rd ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conference.

[4]  Henning Früchting,et al.  Investigation of planar antennas with photovoltaic solar cells for mobile communications , 2004, 2004 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (IEEE Cat. No.04TH8754).

[5]  David L. Churchill,et al.  Power management for energy harvesting wireless sensors , 2005, SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring.

[6]  Rajeevan Amirtharajah,et al.  Integrated Solar Energy Harvesting and Storage , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems.

[7]  Andreas G. Andreou,et al.  Photo-battery fabricated in silicon on sapphire CMOS , 2008 .

[8]  J. Sakai,et al.  High efficiency organic solar cells by screen printing method , 2005, Conference Record of the Thirty-first IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2005..

[9]  J. Rabaey,et al.  A 400 /spl mu/W-RX, 1.6mW-TX super-regenerative transceiver for wireless sensor networks , 2005, ISSCC. 2005 IEEE International Digest of Technical Papers. Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2005..

[10]  Gábor Mezösi,et al.  Sensor powering with integrated MOS compatible solar cell array , 2006, 2006 IEEE Design and Diagnostics of Electronic Circuits and systems.

[11]  B. Otis,et al.  21.4 A 400∝W-RX, 1.6mW-TX Super- Regenerative Transceiver for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005 .