Patent ID: 7535281

Claim:
A charge pump, comprising: a voltage boost circuit coupled to receive an input voltage and structured to boost the input voltage to a boosted voltage having a magnitude or polarity that is different from that of the input voltage, the boosted voltage being applied to an output terminal; and an input voltage circuit coupled to the output terminal of the voltage boost circuit, the input voltage circuit comprising: a reference voltage source generating a reference voltage; a differential amplifier having an output terminal on which the input voltage is generated, the differential amplifier having a first input terminal and a second input terminal, the first and second input terminals being coupled to receive the reference voltage from the reference voltage source and a feedback signal, respectively, the differential amplifier being structured to generate the input voltage with a magnitude that is proportional to the difference between the magnitude of a reference voltage and the magnitude of the feedback voltage; a boosting sample circuit coupled to the output terminal of the voltage boost circuit to receive the boosted voltage, the boosting sample circuit being operable to generate the feedback voltage by periodically sampling the boosted voltage to generate respective samples and then generating the feedback voltage from the samples; and a capacitor coupled between the output terminal of the differential amplifier and the second input terminal of the differential amplifier.