Patent ID: 7595683

Claim:
A charge pump system comprising: an input terminal at which an input voltage is received; an output terminal at which at an output voltage is provided; N stages connected in cascade between the input terminal and the output terminal, wherein each of the N stages comprises: at most one inverter circuit, the inverter circuit having a first transistor connected at a node to a second transistor; a first capacitor coupled at one end to the node between the first and second transistors, the first capacitor coupled at another end to receive one of two non-overlapping phase signals; and wherein at one value for the one of two non-overlapping phase signals the first capacitor of the stage is charged by a respective stage input voltage, and wherein at another value for the one of two non-overlapping phase signals the first capacitor of the stage is discharged to provide a respective stage output voltage; and wherein the charge pump system generating the output voltage with a greater magnitude than the input voltage even when the supply voltage is below 1V; wherein each of the first through the (N−1)th stages receives a control signal from a subsequent stage in the charge pump system.