A novel 2-terminal zener voltage reference

In this paper, we present a novel 2-terminal zener voltage reference of 0.23V which is also commonly known as a shunt regulator. The circuit realizes the use of sub-threshold technology of MOSFET and it is simulated with Chartered 0.18μm CMOS process. Simulation results explicitly show that a stable 2-terminal zener voltage reference of 0.23V is generated with a temperature coefficient of 3.7ppm/°C across a temperature range of 0 to 150°C. Furthermore, the minimum operating current is 10μA which yields a low power consumption of 2.3μW. The line regulation is 22.8mV/V. This circuit only consumes a silicon area of 0.0009 mm². Being 2-terminal, this simple design can be used to provide a very low and stable voltage difference between any two nodes in a circuit.