Ultra low voltage complementary metal oxide semiconductor (ULV-CMOS) circuits: bulk CMOS operation below threshold (VTO)

To achieve greater reduction in inverter operating voltage and power consumption, ULV-CMOS circuits operating with supply voltages of 900 mV and lower were implemented using bulk processed CMOS transistors. The low voltage operation was achieved by applying the input to both the gate and body of the CMOS transistors. The input voltage forward biases the body to source junction(s), which in turn lowers the V_T´s (threshold voltage) and makes the lower voltage operation possible. A flip-flop and a three stage inverter chain using this technique have been demonstrated