ISSCC 2012 / SESSION 18 / INNOVATIVE CIRCUITS IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES / 18.1
18.1

Insole Pedometer with Piezoelectric Energy
Harvester and 2V Organic Digital and Analog Circuits

Koichi Ishida1, Tsung-Ching Huang1, Kentaro Honda1,
Yasuhiro Shinozuka1, Hiroshi Fuketa1, Tomoyuki Yokota1,
Ute Zschieschang2, Hagen Klauk2, Gregory Tortissier1,
Tsuyoshi Sekitani1,3, Makoto Takamiya1, Hiroshi Toshiyoshi1,
Takao Someya1,3, Takayasu Sakurai1
1

University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Max Planck Institute for Solid-State Research, Stuttgart, Germany
3
JST/ERATO, Tokyo, Japan

PMOS transistors, and two MIM capacitors. To charge the left capacitor, the output buffer of the Pseudo-CMOS inverter consists of transistors with width of
2mm (W/L=100) and 6mm (W/L=300). The performance of the negative voltage
generator strongly depends on the threshold voltage of the PMOS diode-connected transistors. To reduce the reverse leakage current, the gate width of each
diode-connected transistor is smaller (W/L=50) than that of the inverter. The
measured waveforms and output voltage versus the output current are shown inFigs. 18.1.4(b) and 18.1.4(c), respectively. The output voltage (VOUT) of the negative voltage generator is -1.6V in the case of 10Hz clock pulses and can provide
a power of at least 10µW power to the load circuit.

2

Energy harvesting is an enabling technology for realizing an ambient power supply for wireless sensor nodes and mobile devices. By using flexible photovoltaic cells and piezoelectric films, we can readily harvest ambient energy if flexible
energy harvesters can be realized. Conventional silicon circuits, however, are notbest suited to realizing flexible large-area energy harvesters because they are notmechanically conformable to uneven surfaces such as shoes. To address thischallenge, we propose an organic insole pedometer with a piezoelectric energy
harvester in this paper as the first step toward ambient energy harvesting usingorganic flexible electronics.
The main challenge in the design of organic circuits for piezoelectric energy harvesting is the robust operation of PMOS-only circuits at a low supply voltage. In
energy-harvesting applications, the harvested power is small and the rectified
voltage is low (e.g., 2V). In organic circuit design, PMOS-only circuits are often
used, because the mobility of PMOS transistors is much higher than that ofNMOS transistors in our process. The operation of PMOS-only circuits is notrobust and the noise margin is small because of their rationed-logic nature. A
Pseudo-CMOS inverter that consists of four PMOS transistors [1] has high gain,
but it requires a negative voltage bias. In energy-harvesting applications, however, a single power supply is typical. Therefore, in this work, to increase thenoise margin of PMOS-only logic circuits, a negative voltage is generated by acharge pump and is applied as the bias of Pseudo-CMOS inverters. We use a 2V
PMOS process with self-aligned monolayer (SAM) technology [2] and DNTT [3]for PMOS transistors.
Figure 18.1.1 shows a photograph of the proposed insole pedometer including
the piezoelectric energy harvester and the 2V organic PMOS rectifier and counter. A polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) sheet is used as the piezoelectric energy
harvester. Twenty-one rolls of PVDF film are embedded in the insole. Each timethe insole is pressed by the foot during walking, the harvested energy is rectified by the organic rectifier and the number of the steps is counted by the organic counter.
Figure 18.1.2 shows a block diagram of the proposed organic insole pedometer.
It consists of four circuit blocks. The all-PMOS full-wave rectifier supplies a voltage VDD of approximately 2V to all circuit blocks. In the clock generator, the output of the PVDF harvester is half-wave-rectified and a Schmitt trigger inverter
converts the half-wave-rectified signal into a clock signal. The generated clock
signal is sent to both the PMOS negative voltage generator and a 14-bit PseudoCMOS counter with gate-boosted PMOS switches. The negative voltage generator supplies a voltage VSS (e.g., -2V) to the counter.
Figure 18.1.3(a) shows a schematic of the all-PMOS full-wave rectifier [4]. A
100V sinusoidal wave was rectified in [4], while a 2V sinusoidal wave is rectified
in this work. Figure 18.1.3(b) shows the measured waveform of the 2V full-wave
rectifier without a smoothing capacitor. The output is open and the output amplitude of the rectifier is approximately 2V with 1Hz, 4V peak-to-peak sinusoidal
input signals. Figure 18.1.3(c) shows the measured output voltage versus theoutput current of the rectifier with a 1µF smoothing capacitor. The proposed
PMOS rectifier (W/L of each transistor is 144) can provide a power of at least
10µW to the circuit. Figure 18.1.3(d) shows the measured waveforms for a
20×28cm2 sheet of PVDF energy harvester and the rectified output. The 1µFsmoothing capacitor can be charged by providing a mechanical force to thePVDF energy harvester.
Figure 18.1.4(a) shows a schematic of the proposed all-PMOS negative voltage
generator, which consists of a Pseudo-CMOS inverter [1], two diode-connected308• 2012 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference

To generate clean clock signals from noisy input signals using the PVDF energy
harvester, a PMOS-only Schmitt trigger inverter based on pseudo-CMOS logic isproposed. Figure 18.1.5 shows the schematics and output waveforms of theproposed Schmitt trigger inverter. Unlike conventional CMOS Schmitt trigger
inverters that can use both PMOS and NMOS transistors to generate hysteresis,in the proposed PMOS-only Schmitt trigger inverter, the first stage is used toadjust the lower bound (VM-) of the hysteresis, while the second stage is foradjusting the upper bound (VM+). When the input signal is swept from low tohigh, the top PMOS transistor of the second stage (M1), which is controlled by
the third-stage Pseudo-CMOS inverter output, pushes the high-to-low switching
point toward the right, as can be seen in Fig. 18.1.5(c); on the other hand, when
the input is swept from high to low, the ground-connected PMOS transistor (M2)of the first stage weakens the pull-up force of the top two PMOS transistors,
which forces the low-to-high switching point to move toward the left and widen
the hysteresis, as shown in Fig. 18.1.5(c). On the basis of the measured waveform in Fig. 18.1.5(d), we can find that the switching points for the high-to-low
and low-to-high transients have approximately 0.3V difference, and this characteristic plays a key role in supplying clean clock signals for the counter.
Figure 18.1.6 shows the schematics and measured waveforms of a single-stage
2V Pseudo-CMOS binary counter with asynchronous reset. By connecting fourteen such stages, we can build a 14-bit binary counter for the proposed pedometer. On the basis of a divide-by-two frequency divider, a new gate-boosting technique is applied in this counter to compensate for the poor conductivity ofPMOS-only transmission gates. By employing a level-shifted clock buffer, asshown in Fig. 18.1.6(a), we can effectively overdrive PMOS transmission gatesby applying negative voltages though the VSS terminal in the clock buffer.
Compared with Fig. 18.1.6(b), where the gate-boosting technique is not applied
and the PMOS transmission gates suffered from poor conductivity, the output
waveform of the gate-boosted counter in Fig. 18.1.6(c) is clean owing to thelarger clock signal swing from VDD to VSS. Note that Fig. 18.1.6 only shows thesignals from output Q1, while QB1 is used for connecting to the next stage ofthe binary counter. Figure 18.1.7 shows photographs of the organic circuits andsummarizes their key features. The organic insole pedometer consists of 462
transistors and its size is 22×7cm2.

Acknowledgement:This study was partially supported by JST/CREST and Special Coordination
Funds for Promoting and Technology. We also thank Prof. K. Takimiya ofHiroshima Univ. and Drs. H. Kuwabara and M. Ikeda of Nippon Kayaku Co., Ltd.,for high-purity DNTT.
References:[1] T.-C. Huang, et al., “Pseudo-CMOS: A Design Style for Low-Cost and Robust
Flexible Electronics,” IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 58, no. 1, pp.
141-150, Jan. 2011.
[2] H. Klauk, et al., “Ultralow-power organic complementary circuits,” Nature,
vol. 445, pp. 745-748, Feb. 2007.
[3] T. Yamamoto and K. Takimiya, “Facile Synthesis of Highly π-Extended
Heteroarenes,
Dinaphtho[2,3-b:2’,3’-f]chalcogenopheno[3,2-b]chalcogenophenes, and Their
Application to Field-Effect Transistors,” Journal of American Chemical Society,vol. 129, no. 8, pp. 2224-2225, Aug. 2007.
[4] Koichi Ishida, et al., “100V AC Power Meter System-on-a-Film (SoF)
Integrating 20V Organic CMOS Digital and Analog Circuits with Floating Gate for
Process Variation Compensation and 100V Organic PMOS Rectifier,” ISSCC Dig.
Tech. Papers, pp. 218-219, Feb. 2011.

978-1-4673-0377-4/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

ISSCC 2012 / February 22, 2012 / 8:30 AM

Figure 18.1.1: Prototype of the organic insole pedometer with piezoelectricenergy harvester and 2V digital and analog circuits.

Figure 18.1.2: System block diagram of the organic insole pedometer.

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Figure 18.1.3: 2V organic all-PMOS rectifier.

Figure 18.1.4: All-PMOS negative voltage generator.

Figure 18.1.5: Pseudo-CMOS Schmitt trigger inverter.

Figure 18.1.6: Pseudo-CMOS counter with gate-boosted PMOS switches.

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Figure 18.1.7: Photographs and key features.

• 2012 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference

978-1-4673-0377-4/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE