Patent ID: 8076968

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: a first transistor connected at a node to a second transistor, wherein the first transistor receives a respective first control signal and the second transistor receives a respective second control signal, wherein the respective first and second control signals are operable to turn on and off the first and second transistors; 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 one of the 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 one of the two non-overlapping phase signals the first capacitor of the stage is discharged to provide a respective stage output voltage; and wherein for at least some of the N stages, the first control signal is provided from a subsequent stag; and wherein for each of the second through the N-th stages, the second control signal is provided from a prior stage of the charge pump system; wherein the charge pump system is capable of generating the output voltage with a greater magnitude than the input voltage even when the supply voltage is below 1V.