Design and implementation of electrical-supply-free VLSI circuits

In this paper, we propose an approach of the design and implementation of VLSI circuits free of electrical supply and power rails. With this approach, the circuits can be made to use the power carried by incident light for supply, control, and optical charge pumping. They are based on using photodiodes for power conversion. The circuits can be fabricated in a standard CMOS technology without additional processes. A test circuit involving basic gates and a pulse generator has been designed and fabricated in a 0.18 /spl mu/m process, and successfully tested.