A monolithic smart switching cell targeted to a wide range of low power high density applications

A smart power switching cell to be fabricated with standard CMOS technologies was developed, in view to obtain a versatile, high performance and low cost basic building block, suitable for a wide range of low power applications. This switching cell merges together two transistors, connected in a low-side/high-side switch configuration, with specific control and protection circuitries. These transistors are NMOS medium-voltage lateral structures, which use the lightly doped drain concept and are targeted to handle currents up to 2A and to support 25 V, at OFF state. Experimental results on different topologies show its applicability on portable systems power supplies. Their performance proves the ability of standard CMOS technologies to implement smart power circuits