Multiple-output MEMS DC/DC converter: a system modeling study

DC/DC converters are widely used in consumer electronic devices where usually a single power source is available while the electronic board of the device requires different voltage levels in order to power-up different block functions. In this paper we present the design of a MEMS single-input multi-output voltage level shifter. The low-voltage to high-voltage conversion is based on the electrostatic transduction of variable capacitors built using interdigitated comb fingers. A 1 mm2 MEMS prototype has been designed and fabricated using the SOIMUMPs process. In this study we present the co-design and co-simulation of the whole system (the MEMS device and its dedicated charge-pump-circuit) in a single EDA environment through MEMS+ (a Coventorware® tool that allows the co-simulation of MEMS and electronics in the Cadence Analog Design Environment). We present analytical, FEM and MEMS+ models of the multi-output DC---DC converter and show that all our models converge towards the experimental results.