Drawing the Most Power From Low-Cost Single-Well 1-mm(2) CMOS Photovoltaic Cells

作者：Prabha Rajiv Damodaran^*; Rincon Mora Gabriel A

来源：IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS II-EXPRESS BRIEFS, 2017, 64(1): 46-50.

DOI：10.1109/TCSII.2016.2546907

• Ambient light
• energy harvesters
• low-cost single-well CMOS photovoltaic (PV) cells
• wireless microsensors

Photovoltaic (PV) cells can generate 100x more power from light than other transducers can from motion, radiation, and heat. Although custom multijunction nonsilicon and multiwell complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) cells output more power, single-well process technologies cost less. Amorphous cells cost even less but output less power. However, with only a small window of light available, tiny CMOS cells output little. This brief explores and proposes open-terminal singlewell CMOS PV cell configurations that output more power than competing low-cost CMOS cells in literature. Measurements with 0.35-mu m 1 x 1-mm(2) single-well CMOS cells show that deeper and lighter doped junctions generate higher power than shallower junctions, and double-junction configurations output even higher power. This is why sunlight on N+ in P substrate and N well in P substrate cells outputs 6 and 98 mu W and on shorted and open-terminal P+ in N well in P substrate structures outputs 132 mu W. Opening the P+ terminal outputs even more power because P+ metal, which blocks light, is no longer necessary.

• 出版日期2017-1