A Bipolar ±13 mV Self-Starting and 85% Peak Efficiency DC/DC Converter for Thermoelectric Energy Harvesting

Harald Dillersberger, Bernd Deutschmann and Douglas Tham
Additional contact information
Harald Dillersberger: Institute of Electronics, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria
Bernd Deutschmann: Institute of Electronics, Graz University of Technology, 8010 Graz, Austria
Douglas Tham: Matrix Industries, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 20, 1-11

Abstract: This paper presents a novel converter for boosting the low-voltage output of thermoelectric energy harvesters to power standard electronic circuits. The converter can start up from a fully depleted state of the system off a bipolar ±13 mV input and can boost it to output voltages of up to 5 V. The converter comprises two transformers, one for each polarity that are multiplexed between an oscillator (used during startup) and a flyback converter (used during normal operation). To eliminate leakage currents in the input stage, the unused converter is completely turned off at startup and both converters are automatically shut off if the input power is found to be too low. Measurement results of the converter designed in a 180 nm CMOS process demonstrate a peak end-to-end conversion efficiency of 85% and nearly perfect impedance matching over the full input voltage range. This is the first time that a converter for ultra-low bipolar input voltages achieves the same performance as a unipolar converter.

Keywords: energy harvesting; thermoelectric generator; bipolar input; ultra-low voltage; impedance matching; transformer reuse; Meissner oscillator; flyback converter; DC/DC converter (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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