Patent ID: 7932770

Claim:
A charge pump circuit which performs a charge pump operation in response to complementary first and second clock signals to generate a pumped voltage, the charge pump circuit comprising: a first pump stage arranged in a first pump stage row and in a first pump cell; and a second pump stage arranged in a second pump stage row different from the first pump stage row and in the first pump cell, wherein: each of the first pump stage and the second pump stage includes: an input node; an output node; a charge transfer transistor, one end of which is connected to the output node, and the other end of which is connected to the input node; a pump capacitor, one end of which is connected to the output node, and the other end of which receives one of the first and second clock signals; and a connection switcher connected to a gate of the charge transfer transistor and having two control nodes, the input node of the first pump stage and the output node of the second pump stage are connected to said two control nodes of the connection switcher of the first pump stage, respectively, and the pump capacitor of the first pump stage receives one of the first and second clock signals and the pump capacitor of the second pump stage receives the other one of the first and second clock signals.